800m world record holder Wilson Kipketer in Singapore ahead of Youth Olympic Games

Story and pictures by Colin Tung/Red Sports

Corpthorne Orchid Hotel and Co-Curricular Activities Branch, Tuesday, August 10, 2010 — Some of Singapore’s coaches and young runners got a chance to see 800m world record holder Wilson Kipketer in the flesh this week. Kipketer, who is here as a Youth Olympic Games (YOG) athlete role model, also took the opportunity to conduct a middle-distance running clinic.

Kipketer, who was born in Kenya but moved to Denmark in 1990 and became a citizen there, was joined by International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) lecturers Valeri Obidko (horizontal jumps) and Ralph Mouchbahani (vertical jumps).

And so, it was on the sidelines of this event that Red Sports got to speak with the 37-year-old Kipketer, who retired from competitive running in 2005 after three World Championship 800m gold medals and an Olympic silver and bronze from the 2000 and 2004 editions respectively (he had been unable to compete at the 1996 Olympics for Denmark as he was not yet a full citizen).

It is 13 days to the day, 13 years ago, that Kipketer set his 800m world record of 1 minute 41.11 seconds on August 24, 1997. That was a year in which he was at the peak of his prowess, first tying Sebastian Coe’s outdoor record, set in 1981, then lowering it twice and also setting the indoor record of 1:42.67. Both records still stand today.

Though many people would express satisfaction at such long-standing personal feats, Kipketer was more mindful of the wider interest of the sport.

In reply to a question about whether he thought his outdoor world record will be broken soon by Abubaker Kaki or David Rudisha, both prodigious 21-year-olds who have come closest this year with efforts of 1:42.23 (Rudisha ran a 1:42.04 to beat Kaki in the same race) and 1:41.51 respectively, Kipketer said: “I don’t know when they will break my record. But if the record stays too long, it is not good for the sport. It may be good for me but not for the sport.”

That Africa has produced yet another two distance running gems in Kaki and Rudisha, who hail from Sudan and Kenya respectively, is no surprise. So it was put to Kipketer if he thought Asians could ever challenge Africa’s stranglehold on distance running. His reply was heartening.

“As long as you believe, you can do it,” he urged.

“I found out about your (national) record (S. Surenda’s 1:49.9) and I think you can lower it to maybe 1:46 or 1:45 (which will be on par with international standards),” Kipketer further added.

“It is negative to say ‘I cannot run.’ When I was young, people said: ‘Wilson is lazy.’ But I wanted to show them I was not. I decided I wanted to be a champion.”

“You must not think negative. The moment you start thinking negative, the result will be negative. ‘I am going to have a cake’ — that is what you must think of the effort,” he surmised.

Listening to his comments lets one see the amount of motivation one needs in the quest to become a world class runner like he was. Especially for a discipline like middle-distance running where it can often get lonely chalking up hundreds of kilometres on the track, trails or road, and sometimes even a combination of two or more of these terrains.

Kipketer used to chalk up 100-140 kilometres of mileage a week when he was still competing.

To guard against the loneliness of training (he says he likes training alone), he says it is important to “set a target to motivate yourself.”

“My personal motto is: ‘Today has to be better than yesterday, and tomorrow has to be better than today.’ That is what you must think when you train. So every year, your training has to be tougher (than the last),” he added further.

For local 800m and 1500m runner, Raviin Muthu Kumar, one thing he has learnt from Kipketer is the latter’s humility.

Raviin said after a warm-up jog with Kipketer: “Everything about him is so quiet, from his running style to the way he talks.”

Kipketer is indeed an athlete who lets his feet do the talking. And it speaks much of his character that his humility is what is loudest about him.

So when Raviin managed to draw some advice from Kipketer, he clung onto those pearls of wisdom.

Raviin said: “When you hear things from a world record holder, it’s totally different. Your coach can say the same thing but it’s different when the world record holder says it.”

And so, at the YOG athletics competition from 17-23 August, athletes will no doubt be drawing upon Kipketer’s inspiration to be a champion like him.

For them, Kipketer is looking forward to see “the young talent of the world unite, with the same ambitions and enjoying the Olympic spirit.”

And he has this advice: “It’s not about the result. There can only be one champion. So you got to learn something. Sports is a way of learning.”

Even as the evening drew to a close, his trademark smile continued to light up all around him.

Watch Kipketer in a 2009 interview with letsrun.com here

For more photos, go to the next page