t-and-f  

Re: t-and-f: Henry Rono

Bob Duncan
Fri, 30 Mar 2007 17:35:05 -0800

Chas. L. Shaffer wrote:
I'd go to see him run if it was within 300 miles. My wife and I were among the roughly 200 fans present when he broke the WR in the steeplechase at the Northwest Relays in Seattle on May 13, 1978 with a 8:05.4 (h). After that I saw him race several more times, including the great 10,000m duel with Salazar in 1982 in Eugene.
I am looking forward to his masters record pursuit, whatever it may bring. I am glad to hear that Henry is back on a good path. 

Charley Shaffer
Seattle
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Lucky you! I never saw him race in person. I remember being in Knoxville for the 1982 TAC meet, when they let foreigners compete, and he was listed in the program. I kept thinking that I was seeing him warming up, but it was not to be. 

bob
(KC4TEO)



-----Original Message-----

From: Bob Duncan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Mar 30, 2007 7:18 AM
To: t-and-f@lists.uoregon.edu
Subject: Re: t-and-f: Henry Rono

Tom Derderian wrote:

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


Yep, that's where I saw his posts.  At first, I thought that I was
hallucinating or reading the posts of an imposter.
Given Henry's natural gifts and motivation, it will be fascinating to see
how this turns out.  I'm sure lots of people are rooting for him.

bob



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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