Strata | Short Interviews | Kenyan Winter Olympic Athlete (original) (raw)
Kenya: It's Not Just for Runners Anymore
Paul Mistor
One evening recently I found myself drinking a beer and watching the opening ceremonies for the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. I saw athletes from all over the globe march into the Olympic stadium. There was Japan, the host of the last Winter Olympics, marching in with a rather large contingent of one hundred and ten athletes. Next in was the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan with fifty one athletes. After that, came Kenya, with one athlete -- a cross-country skier. I thought to myself, What the heck is a Kenyan doing in the Winter Olympics?
When I think of Kenyan athletes, I think of distance runners since Kenya is home to some of the world’s best. If you look at the top performances of all time in any running event longer than eight hundred meters, you will find no less than four Kenyans in the top ten, with the steeplechase having all ten top spots occupied by Kenyans. But distance running is a Summer Olympic sport. In fact, I would bet that 99.9% of the population has never seen nor heard of snow, So how did a Kenyan become interested in cross-country skiing?
Well, I was going to Salt Lake City in a couple of days, so maybe I'd get the chance to find out.
As luck and a well-timed email message would have it, I did meet this Kenyan. His name is Philip Boit, and has been Kenya’s lone athlete in the last two Winter Olympics. He lives in Eldoret, which is a running mecca; almost all of Kenya's great runners come from this area. As you can see from the picture, this is not a winter sports haven. Although it is almost 7,000 feet above sea level, Eldoret is just forty miles north of the equator and thusly has an average daytime temperature between seventy-five and eighty-five degrees Fahrenheit.
I asked Philip how someone who grew up in an area known for migrating wildebeest and zebras became a pioneer for his country in the sport of cross-country skiing. That’s when he explained the significance of his background in running.
First, he was born into an athletic family. His older brother, Mike Boit, was an Olympic runner in the 1972 Summer Games and won a bronze medal in the eight hundred meter event. In fact, his older brother was one of the best eight hundred meter runners in the world for almost ten years. He most likely would have won several more medals except that Kenya boycotted the 1976 and 1980 Olympics. Like his brother, Philip liked to run. And like all good Kenyans, he would run to and from school every day. (School happened to be nine miles from his home.) Philip was pretty fast and started running track in high school. Soon he was recruited to run for a local club in Eldoret.
Nike is the biggest name in sports in Kenya and has sponsored Kenyan Olympic teams for a number of years. Around the mid-1990s Nike started
moving into winter sports, so in December 1995, when Nike sent word to Kenya that they were looking for a couple of volunteers to cross over to winter sports, there was a lot of interest.
While Philip was fast (1:46.06 for eight hundred meters), he still wasn’t quite at the top of the list of very competitive Kenyan runners. When Nike asked for volunteers, Philip thought that this would be a good way get some sponsorship, train in the winter, and run on the European track circuit in the summer. So without ever having seen snow or a pair of skis, Philip and Henry Bitok volunteered for Nike’s experiment. They were going to see if Kenyans could be as good in cross-country skiing as they were in long distance running.
In February 1996, Philip and Henry left Nairobi wearing a shirt and thin jacket and flew 7,000 miles north to Finland. When the doors of the plane opened in Finland, they felt what it was like to be cold for the very first time in their lives -- and it was very cold. Not only was it typically cold Finnish day, but this airport required them to have to walk across the tarmac to reach the gate. Philip was freezing and turned to check with his friend. Henry was freezing too. They wanted nothing more than to run across the tarmac to the gate, but they looked around and noticed that no one else was running. Being new to this foreign land, they didn’t want to appear abnormal, so they gritted their teeth and walked like everyone else to the gate. Luckily, the coach was waiting for them with warm winter gear, which they changed into immediately.
But that wasn’t the end of their day. The Finnish TV cameras were there to film their first reaction to seeing snow. They put on their winter coats and went outside to see and touch snow for the first time in their lives. They were out there for only thirty minutes when Philip couldn’t take it anymore. He recalled, "We were really frozen. We asked the coach if we could go inside, because we couldn’t do that anymore. I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t hold anything. My hands were just frozen, so we had to go inside."
They made it inside the airport and drove to sports center where they were going to train. That night was a restless one for the pair, as Philip described: "So the whole night we were talking about this thing. We were all the time talking about and maybe thinking of going back to Kenya because we found out, this thing we might not survive."
They wanted to go back, but the next day the television group was coming again. Everyone was expecting to see them ski for the first time. Philip described, "We had to change to be like skiers. We put on boots, put on everything, and we went with skis. That was the first time we see the skis. We were just turning them around. Looking at them, just looking."
Soon they saw other skiers going by and became interested in trying. They were ready to start, but there was an issue. Philip recalls, "It was a problem because my coach had to get some other staff members from the sports center for help. So they could come and hold us. About two people holding one person. [We] put on the skis. Then they try to hold you so you can go. I couldn’t even stand myself. When I have been held by two people, when they leave me, I just fall."
Philip continued. "It took us something like three, four, up to five days [to learn how to stand]. Then we started. At least you move, maybe ten meters, you fall down, twenty meters, fall down. And we work on it, even though we were thinking we might go home," Philip goes on to say, "but our coach was giving us a lot of pressure. Giving us a lot of presents. I remember we got a lot of presents that time because every night he comes with something."
"So he [coach] was convincing our minds. And we were happy because we were getting everything." After one month they could ski on the flat areas. After two, they could ski down small downhills. They trained in Finland for three months. After finishing the season, they waited in Europe for both summer and track and field to begin. When the track season ended in August, they went home briefly and then started the routine all over again in preparation for the 1998 Olympics.
In 1998, Henry was hurt, so Philip became the first Kenyan to compete in the Winter Olympics. He was also the first African to compete in cross-country skiing. Nike used this as a great publicity vehicle to promote their winter sports equipment, but it was more than a publicity stunt for Philip -- he was hooked on the sport.
That first winter, Philip had met Bjorn Daehlie of Norway, one of the greatest cross-country skiers ever. Bjorn Daehlie is a legend in Norway and cross country skiing. He is the most successful man ever to strap on a pair of cross-country skis, with eight Olympic gold medals -- twelve Olympic medals total -- and over forty World Cup victories. Bjorn is to cross country skiing what Michael Jordan is to basketball.
Bjorn took a liking to Philip and encouraged him. They became good friends. In fact, Philip named his first-born son, Daehlie Boit, after the great skier. In the 1998 Olympics, when Philip crossed the finish line Bjorn was there waiting and cheering him on. (Bjorn had won the gold medal that day). He continues to encourage Philip, and was there again when he finished the 2002 Olympics.
Philip also became the first African to compete in the world championships of cross-country skiing in 1999. After that, Nike dropped the sponsorship, and without it Philip was left to train in snowless Kenya. But he kept at it, with everyone back home still wondering what he was doing, and hoped that Nike would pick the sponsorship back up. They did in late 2001 and Philip found himself in his second Winter Olympics Games.
While he is still at the back of the pack of a world-class field, Philip has improved his ten kilometer time by over ten minutes from the last Olympics. He continues to pioneer the sport in his country and hopes to participate in the next Olympics.
Since Philip started his trailblazing efforts in cross-country skiing, other athletes from Africa have been inspired to try and several more nations have joined the Winter Olympics. It's things like this that bring the Winter Olympic goal of trying to unite athletes from all nations through sports a little closer to reality.