Kipchoge Keino donates to World Athletics Heritage Collection

To mark the anniversary of his 5000m world record, Kipchoge Keino, the father of Kenya's distance running made a generous donation to the World Athletics (WA) Heritage Collection and the Museum of WA (MOWA). 

The veteran athlete, a double Olympics champion, donated the silver trophy he collected for one of the sizzling performances with which he set European tracks alight in the northern hemisphere summer of 1965. His trophy is now on display at the MOWA. 

Keino who retired from track competition in 1974 became the first African to run a sub-four-minute mile in August 1965, with a 3:54.2 mark that made the middle distance novice the third-fastest man of all time then, behind Frenchman Michel Jazy’s two month old world record of 3:53.6 and New Zealander Peter Snell’s former global mark of 3:54.1.

“I did not know I could run anything as fast as that at a shorter distance,” he told WA in an interview. 

He returned to London the following year, won the race again and was given the trophy in perpetuity.

Three days before his 1965 victory, Keino had made the first of his two marks on the world record books, smashing East German Siegfried Hermann’s 3000m time by six seconds with 7:39.6 in the Swedish coastal town of Helsingborg.

Running at the Western Springs Stadium in Auckland 56 years ago, Keino registered mile splits of 4:16.0, 4:17.8 to reach two miles in 8.33.8. Though he tired significantly, with a 4:24.5 third mile, he closed with a final lap of 63.5 to break Clarke’s record with a time of 13:24.2. Kiwi William Baillie was second in 14:01.2, with Yugoslav Franc Cervan third 14.02.0.

At the Mexico Olympics in 1968, Keino chose to take on the daunting challenge of the 1500m, 5000m and 10,000m in the punishing thin air of Mexico City.

He collapsed with two laps to go in the 10,000m final from severe stomach pains which were later diagnosed as severe gall bladder infection. 

Four days later, despite being unable to digest solid food, Keino took the silver medal in the 5000m behind Mohamed Gammoudi of Tunisia, with Kenyan Naftali Temu in third.

Against doctor's advise, he competed in the 1500m final, winning his first Olympics gold. He finished 20 metres clear of Jim Ryun, the US favourite who held the world records for 800m, 1500m and the mile, and who had been unbeaten at 1500m and the mile for three years. 

Keino finished second to Finland’s Pekka Vasala in the 1500m final at the1972 Olympic Games in Munich but claimed his second Olympic gold as a novice 3000m steeplechaser. “I jumped the hurdles like a horse,” he tells WA.

Additional information from World Athletics