Re: t-and-f: Henry Rono

[Tom Derderian]

19:25
On Mar 29, 2007, at 11:37 PM, B. Kunnath wrote:

Rono posts regularly here:

http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php? board=1&id=1828663&thread=1444899

Any predictions for his 5k time at Carlsbad?

bob

From: "Bob Duncan" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: "Bob Duncan" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "'Track List'" <t-and-f@lists.uoregon.edu>
Subject: Re: t-and-f: Henry Rono
Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2007 21:45:19 -0500

I accidently came across some posts from Rono the other day on one of the running forums. I almost couldn't believe that it was him, but the training claims and master's mile goal matched those of the LA Times story.

Ironically, I had found the Rono posts while doing searches for another comebacking athlete from the same era, Patti (Catalano) Dillon.

bob

----- Original Message ----- From: "malmo" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

To: "'Jorma Kurry'" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "'Track List'" <t-and-f@lists.uoregon.edu>

Sent: Thursday, March 29, 2007 7:43 PM
Subject: RE: t-and-f: Henry Rono

Henry ran a 5:32 mile in a time trial last week at Albuquerque (5000'). From

220 pounds to 165 since last May.

malmo

-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Jorma Kurry
Sent: Thursday, March 29, 2007 7:42 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; Track List
Subject: Re: t-and-f: Henry Rono

Great article. I know Malmo was posting info at one point about his attempt for an age-group mile record, or something of that sort. Is there an update?

He's among the many greats I'd love to meet (Rono, that is :) ).
----- Original Message ----- From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Track List" <t-and-f@lists.uoregon.edu>
Sent: Thursday, March 29, 2007 7:00 PM
Subject: t-and-f: Henry Rono

From the Los Angeles Times

http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-crowe26mar26,1,1452093.story? coll=la-hea

dlines-sports&ctrack=1&cset=true

CROWE'S NEST

Rono tries to distance himself from troubled past

The runner, who broke world records in four events in short period in 1978, says his life is on the upswing after alcoholism and homelessness.

By Jerry Crowe, Times Staff Writer
March 26, 2007

Henry Rono, once the world's preeminent distance runner and some say the greatest of all time, probably is best known for his mind- boggling assault

on the record books in the spring and summer of 1978, when he broke world

records in four events over an 81-day period.

"I was ahead of everybody," he says. "I wasn't competing with people. I

was competing with time. It was me and the clock."

The clock he could handle.

The bottle, he couldn't.

The Nandi tribesman from Kenya, who in 1978 was a Washington State student

unprepared for the sudden fame and blinding spotlight, has battled
alcoholism for nearly half his 55 years.

His country's boycotts of the 1976 and 1980 Olympics denied him an

international showcase, and he says unscrupulous managers and corrupt Kenyan track and field officials, combined with his own erratic behavior,

left him penniless.

Rono notes in his soon-to-be-published autobiography that he was so down on his luck in the mid-1990s - homeless and out of prospects - that he showed up at Nike headquarters in Beaverton, Ore., and pleaded for a job

cleaning floors.

His former sponsor, the great runner says, turned him away.

If that was a low point for Rono, it was one of many.

He says that he was intermittently homeless through much of the 1980s and '90s, was arrested more than once for driving while drunk, and drifted in and out of rehabilitation centers more times than he cares to remember. Friends took him in, then threw him out when his drinking got out of control. In steadier times, he worked as an airport skycap. He parked and

washed cars.

But all that is past, Rono says. His life is on the upswing. After

shuttling from town to town for years, he says, he finally settled 11 years ago in Albuquerque. He says he has been sober for the last five.

A full-time teacher pursuing a graduate degree in special education, he has taken a year off from work to write his recently completed memoirs and

train for the Masters World Track & Field Championships in September in

Italy.

On Sunday, he will compete in the Carlsbad 5K, and before the year is out

he hopes to establish an age-group world record in the mile.

"I want to alert the public that I am back into running," he told race organizers in Carlsbad after signing on for their event. "I want to teach people that you can come back from the streets and being homeless and

recover your life again."

The 5-foot-8 Rono, whose weight once ballooned to 220 pounds, says he is down to 165, 20 less than he weighed in December, when he ran in a 5K in Cincinnati and said, after spying a photo of himself, "I look like a

heavyweight boxer."

His goal, he says, is to slim down to about 140. That's what he weighed as

a 26-year-old sophomore in April 1978, when in a dual meet at Berkeley he set a world record of 13 minutes 8.4 seconds in the 5,000 meters. A month later, in Seattle, he established a steeplechase mark of 8:05:4, and a month after that, in Vienna, he set a record of 27:22:47 in the 10,000 meters. Sixteen days later, in Oslo, he set his fourth world record:

7:32.1 in the 3,000 meters.

"It was amazing," he says, "but the way the media was handling my success was intimidating. I was not prepared for that. It was very stressful."

Don Franken, a longtime track promoter and president of a sports celebrity

talent agency, says Rono was "a fish out of water," struggling to find his

way.

"It was such a culture shock coming here from Kenya," Franken says. "He was lost - and he had an addiction. You could call him a tragedy, but how

many people set four world records in such a short span of time?"

Rono's records in the 3,000 and the steeplechase stood for years, but by the early 1980s, he was drinking heavily. He started showing up drunk at races, or not showing up at all. But his talent was so immense that, in September 1981, he reportedly got drunk the night before a race in Oslo, ran for an hour early the next morning to sweat out the alcohol, then set

a world record in the 5,000 that night.

Those days are long past, but Rono says his life has changed for the

better. No longer homeless, he bought a house a few years ago.

"I feel happy with what I'm doing now," says the gap-toothed Kenyan,

noting that he runs two hours every morning and another hour in the

evening. "I'm enjoying running. I'm doing more running now than even when

I was young."

He is reclaiming his identity, he says, "controlling my life."

Franken is rooting for him.

"He's gone through a hell of a lot of struggles," the promoter says, "but he's come out a survivor. Yeah, it's a tragedy that his career wasn't longer because he could have achieved so much more. He could have put

every record out of sight.

"But you talk to him now and he has a very good attitude. I think in the long run he's going to contribute a lot more in other ways, so his talent will not be wasted. I think he'll be able to still inspire and motivate people, and that's going to be his legacy. I think he's still got a lot

more to give."

[EMAIL PROTECTED]

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