Kenyan Men Monopolizing All of the Lead Roles

It’s a long-running play that winds through eight sets of scenery, with its 101st performance carried out over 26 miles 385 yards of plots, subplots and intrigue, with occasional dashes of comedy and a fair amount of personal tragedy.

Its story has many lines:

* will Moses Tanui again lead his people and everyone else’s to the Promised Land?

* will Cosmas Ndeti go with God, or will he find out God has gone with somebody else?

* will Dionicio Ceron establish a new world order?

* will German Silva find his way home?

* will Uta Pippig summon enough four-titude to hold her throne as Queen of Boston?

* or will Elana Meyer overthrow Queen Uta I?

* will Fatuma Roba come down from Olympus?

* will any American Indiana Jones or Brantly or Plaatjes or Appell find the Holy Grail?

The Boston Marathon will begin its second 100 years Monday with more questions than answers, and with what answers there are coming from some new stars on distance-running’s oldest stage.

The champions are here to defend their titles--a $75,000 first prize, with various bonuses and appearance fees pushing that to about $200,000 pretty much guarantees it--but there are challengers aplenty. And in the men’s race, the chief challenger is a former champion.

Ndeti won three Boston Marathons in a row and last year, on the steps of a church near the starting line in Hopkinton, Mass., proclaimed both his faith and his appointment with destiny.

“In the name of Jesus, I will be the first man to win this race four times in a row,” he said, but eight cities and towns and 2 hours 9 minutes 15 seconds later his Kenyan countryman, Tanui, was leading the field across the finish line.

There was salt for the wound from Tanui. All of the Kenyans are extremely competitive--particularly against one another--and Ndeti’s pre-race braggadocio was difficult for some of them to take.

“I don’t think to beat Ndeti is something unusual,” Tanui said, but it had been unusual in Boston since 1993.

Ndeti was left to trot on back to Kenya, there to mind the real estate he has gained dominion over by virtue of more than $500,000 in Boston loot accumulated over the past four years.

In a country where the per-capita income is $330, that’s a fair amount of real estate.

Ndeti resurfaced to run sixth in the New York Marathon, which is better than his usual fall fall-down, and has come back to Boston with resolve, having logged enough miles up Mount Kenya to be, he says, in 2:08 or 2:09 shape.

“I feel like it’s 1993 all over again,” he says, “and I am ready to win again.”

And perhaps to run a little differently, his pace and ego geared down from a lunatic 1:03 first half of a year ago in which he pushed the field in a quest for not only a fourth consecutive Boston win but also a world record on the 100th anniversary of the race. Ethiopian Belayneh Dinsamo record, a 2:06:50 set in Rotterdam in 1988, emerged unscathed and Ndeti faded to third, behind Tanui and Ezekiel Bitok, also a Kenyan.

Monday’s race is being billed as the rubber match between Ndeti and Tanui, who claim only peace and friendship exists between them.

“I love Moses,” Ndeti says. “He is like my brother, and if he wins I am happy.”

But if Ndeti wins Monday, he will be happier.

And Ceron and Silva will be sad.

They came here with two missions:

* to score some World Cup qualifying-match tickets for Sunday’s U.S.-Mexico game in Foxboro, something that Mexican running officials have discouraged.

* to annex Boston, a race that has belonged to the Kenyans for the past six years and seven of the last nine. Mexicans have owned the New York Marathon of late, save for that of last year, and Silva has decided his country’s running horizons need broadening.

“It’s not just to beat the Kenyans,” said Silva, perhaps best known for his New York victory in 1994 in which he took a wrong turn into Central Park and then made up about 50 yards in the last eighth of a mile to win.

“They are my friends,” he says. “I like them. I have trained there with Moses. But I want to win for my country. The challenge is to be the first Mexican to win at Boston.”

It is personal with Ceron, but it’s not about Kenyans. Ceron considers the four great marathons to be those run at Boston, London, Rotterdam and Fukuoka, Japan. He has won the other three--London the last three years in a row--and decided at the last minute not to defend in England to try to complete his own personal Grand Slam.

Pippig has won the women’s race three times in a row, last year overcoming diarrhea and cramps to overtake Tegla Laroupe of Kenya in the final two dramatic miles. Four months later, Pippig, of Germany by way of Boulder, Colo., broke down in the 22nd mile at the Atlanta Olympics, suffering a stress fracture and failing to finish a marathon for the first time in her last 20 tries.

Since then, she has suffered another stress fracture--this of the shinbone--and sciatic nerve damage, and has gone through rehabilitation and rebuilding of her regimen that had her uncertain of even being here as recently as February.

And now, “I’m the underdog, not the top favorite,” she said. “It’s wide open.”

Said Meyer of South Africa: “There’s too strong a field to try to beat just one runner.”

Meyer finished third to Pippig in Boston in 1994, and second to her a year later, and she is coming off a Southern Hemisphere summer training at home and off wins at the Gasparilla 15K in Tampa and Cooper River Bridge Run 10K in Charleston, S.C. She is ready to challenge.

“I’ve done a 2:25 here [in 1994] and I’m sure I can go faster than that,” she said.

And what of Roba of Ethiopia, the Olympic winner in 2:26:05, second-fastest time in the world last year?

She had the press in Atlanta scurrying about to find out who she was, largely because, while Ethiopian distance runners have excelled on the world stage, the country’s women have been left to fetch and carry.

Ayalew Yiman, a counselor at the Ethiopian embassy in Washington told the Boston Globe: “[Roba’s Olympic victory] helps us fight male chauvinism in the country. Her winning brings women to a very important standing in society.”

And her desire is to prove it was no fluke, though nerves appear to be taking over.

“I am ready enough to win this race and I am very sure I will win,” she said early in the week. By Friday, it was “I will win if it is God’s will.”

And what of the Americans?

There are a few of note here, Keith Brantly of Florida and Mark Plaatjes, a former Los Angeles Marathon winner living in Colorado, chief among the men; and Kim Jones of Spokane, Wash., and Olga Appell, also a former L.A. Marathon winner from Albuquerque, the top women.

Brantly’s best finish at Boston has been ninth, and he has never run within four minutes of the better Kenyan times. Plaatjes has spent the last year with injury problems.

Appell broke down in the U.S. women’s Olympic trials but came back to run 2:27:59 at Twin Cities in the fall. Jones also broke down in the U.S. trials, but has finished second at Boston twice, in 1991 and ‘93, and third in 1989.

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The Boston Marathon

Moses Tanui of Kenya and Uta Pippig of Germany defend their titles in the 101st running of the Boston Marathon on Monday.

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Quick Studies

Ten to watch in Monday’s race:

MEN

*--*

No. Name, Country Best time 1. Moses Tanui, Kenya 2:09:15 2. Ezekiel Bitok, Kenya 2:09:26 3. Cosmas Ndeti, Kenya 2:07:15 6. German Silva, Mexico 2:09:17 14. Dionicio Ceron, Mexico 2:08:30

*--*

WOMEN

*--*

No. Name, Country Best time F1. Uta Pippig, Germany 2:21:45 F2. Fatuma Roba, Ethiopia 2:26:05 F3. Elana Meyer, South Africa 2:25:15 F4. Junko Asari, Japan 2:26:10 F8. Olga Appell, U.S. 2:27:59

*--*

FASTEST TIMES BY AMERICANS IN 1996

*--*

Name Time Where Run ’96 World Rank Jerry Lawson 2:10:04 Chicago 27th (men) Olga Appell 2:27:59 Twin Cities 16th (women) Jenny Spangler 2:29:54 Olympic Trials 44th (women) Linda Somers 2:30:06 Olympic Trials 47th (women)

*--*

Note: Top time for men in ‘96, Martin Fiz, Spain, Kyongju Marathon, 2:08:25; for women, Katrin Dorre-Heinig, Germany, Osaka Marathon, 2:26:04.

Source: World 1996 rankings.