Earlier today, Dan wrote to ask whether Kenya's 22 steeplechasers in
the world top 100 represented a considerable drop-off. When I checked,
that was not the case. Dan then wrote:
Interesting. Was it the 5k/10 list that they filled with greater
numbers,
or something altogether different I'm remembering?
I thought the comparison might have been with Kenya performance in the
steeple as compared with the marathon, where they remain strong. When I
posted the marathon summary, I commented on Kenya's 51 representatives,
"(That's the first time since I've been charting national depth that
one country has been represented by more than half of the top 100
athletes in any event. Previous high was Kenya's 47 in the 2004 men's
marathon.)"
As far as the 5K/10K are concerned, I only got as far as checking this
year's 5K, where I'd already posted 45 Kenyans in the top 100, and the
10K, where they have 39 in the top 100 and a highest rank of #4. (I
also found, to my embarrassment, that Mirko has lists for both the
10,000 meters and the 10K, with the latter being the list for the road
race. Fortunately, I sent the wrong info just to Dan, before I noticed
the difference. In the much shorter list for the road race, Kenya has
62 of the top 100 and 17 of the top 20!)
In all, I don't see any dramatic fall-off for Kenya in any of the
distance events. Maybe it might be true for the steeple if I looked
back farther than 1998. Anybody have the answer, without doing the work?