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]
[mailto:[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]
