Running battle

For many Kenyan athletes, the road to the Los Angeles Marathon and other major races unexpectedly turned life-threatening in late December when a disputed presidential election ignited unrest that left 1,000 people dead. At least two of them were runners -- and one was a former Olympian.

The carnage since has given way to an uneasy peace in the wake of an agreement reached this week.

But the fallout continues in Kenya, where some runners are being accused of helping fund the violence, and worldwide among race directors who rely on Kenyans to round out their elite athlete rosters.

“All of my athletes got out of Africa,” said Anne Roberts, who coordinates elite athlete appearances for Sunday’s Los Angeles Marathon. “I can’t believe it.”

Roberts had invited about 20 elite male and female athletes, including Joseph Ngolepus, and Benjamin Kipchumba. Additional runners were invited after the violence flared, but Roberts had to wait until Friday to learn if all would make it to Los Angeles.

The Kenyans generally were able to return to their training regimens by mid-January but take care to avoid potential danger.

“They run with one eye on the pavement and the other on the hedges,” said long-time athlete agent Ricky Simms.

But the violence stunned running world veterans.

“It’s like having someone tell you that rioting broke out on the Upper East Side of Manhattan,” said Mary Wittenberg, president and chief executive of the New York City Marathon. “This is so alien to us who know Kenya. It makes no sense at all.”

The post-election violence hit particularly hard around Eldoret, a city in western Kenya’s Rift Valley that has long been a magnet for runners because of its hospitable year-round climate and favorable topography. Kip Keino and Lornah Kiplagat are among the accomplished runners who operate training compounds there.

Early in January, an estimated 17 people died when a mob set fire to a church in a small town outside Eldoret. As the violence flared, runners sharply curtailed their training regimens. For weeks, many stayed indoors. When they did venture outside, long runs were replaced by shorter circuits in safe territory.

“We were fearful to go out,” said Wilson Chepkwony, a 27-year-old runner from Eldoret who plans to run in Los Angeles. “People were fighting, shooting arrows, burning houses, cutting off heads . . . I have never seen something like this in Kenya, which is a beautiful country.”

Chepkwony and other athletes began to worry about the fate of Lucas Sang, a runner on Kenya’s 1988 Olympic team who became a successful farmer. After a fruitless search of area hospitals, the group headed to a mortuary “where there was blood flowing on the ground,” Chepkwony recalled. “Finally, we found the body.”

Sang had been hacked to death by a machete-wielding mob, his corpse burned, Chepkwony said, adding, “We recognized him through his running shoes, his running jacket. He was beheaded.”

According to news reports, a second runner was killed by an arrow.

“We used to run peacefully,” said Linus Maiyo, 25, who lives just outside Eldoret and raced last weekend in Puerto Rico. “Now it is troubling. You don’t know if maybe you are going to meet somebody who might beat or kill you. It is very hard to just walk around if you have any kind of sports clothes on.”

During a news conference Friday in Los Angeles, Kenyan runner Frederic Kiplimo said that he had encountered dead bodies, pools of blood and a severed hand while attempting to train early this year.

“You can’t run and you can’t sleep because many of the people are screaming and houses are being burned down,” said Kiplimo, whose wife, Jacquline Nyetipei, is one of the elite Kenyans invited to run Sunday in Los Angeles.

Even before the violence, some runners feared that they were being targeted for political and tribal reasons -- or simply because runners are envied for their financial success.

“They risk being seen as status symbols because of money which makes them prosperous targets,” said Matthew Turnbull, who recruits top runners for San Diego’s Elite Racing, which operates nine races around the country.

A $25,000 purse in the U.S. might be seen as modest, Turnbull said, “but that can change a lot of peoples’ lives, not just the winner’s. Even $10,000 can change several generations of life in Kenya.”

Mark Saina, for example, used part of his $110,000 prize for winning the 2006 L.A. Marathon to help build a church near Eldoret. “We have so many people that are less fortunate,” Saina said at the time. “I feel happy that I will be able to help in that way.”

Kenyan runners have long invested their earnings in the local economy, said Jackie Lebo, a Kenyan who has written for running publications and websites. Some have purchased commercial real estate in Eldoret. The area also benefits from a “whole class of middle-tier athletes who run, not to represent the country in Olympic or world championships, but to make a living,” Lebo said in an e-mail. “They are journeymen with no illusions.”

Allegations have surfaced, though, that some runners helped fund groups behind the violence.

In a report issued last week, the independent, non-profit International Crisis Group, which monitors global hot spots, said runners have “transformed some of the depressed and sleepy rural villages in the [Eldoret] region by investing in farmland and other real estate.”

One paragraph in the lengthy report suggested that some runners might be funding groups that use machetes and poison-tipped arrows to attack rival tribes. “The athletes, most of whom have a military background, are reportedly also training and sometimes commanding the raiders,” the report said.

The report also suggests that Sang, a member of the Kalenjin tribe, might have been killed while leading a raiding party against members of the Kikuyus tribe. Officials with the national governing body Athletics Kenya discounted the allegations. So did Ngolepus, who was at the Friday news conference and is expected to challenge for the top spot on Sunday: “I condemn [violence] and say that athletes did not sponsor it.”

Amid the upheaval, observers said, Kenyan runners are struggling to stick with their training regimens.

“Kenyans have work ethic that is second to none, and their need to run is like breathing to them,” Roberts said. “It’s how they provide for their families and their extended families. There are a lot of people counting on them.”

Tesla Loroupe, a well-known runner who has been involved in peace negotiations in Nairobi, says she sees reminders of the violence every time she runs.

“You see women who have been disgraced, you see people who had property and now must live without anything,” Loroupe said in a telephone interview. “We cannot train like we used to. You never know who is going to be coming after you. You are not free. It is a difficult thing to see things that remind you of Sudan and Somalia.”

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Times staff writer Edmund Sanders in Nairobi contributed to this report.

greg.johnson@latimes.com