Dec 19, 2006 - Famed Kenyan runner
Kip Keino visited Cornell University last week and LetsRun.com was
pleased to be on-hand to meet the living legend. It was only
appropriate that Keino, the one many credit with spawning the Kenyan
domination of world distance running when he won the first of his two
Olympic golds in 1968 (to see a great video of his dominating 1500
gold,
click here),
visited Cornell because Cornell is a school that in some ways started
the Kenyan domination of US collegiate distance running.
Stephen Machooka, Cornell class of 1964, was the first Kenyan to compete in the US collegiate system.
Machooka competed for Cornell starting in 1960.
After touring Cornell (Keino was amazed about the size of the dairy cows produced by
Cornell's famed Agriculture and Life Science College)
and meeting with Cornell's president, David Skorton, Keino spoke
at two different receptions. At both, Keino spoke about his
amazing success both as an athlete and humanitarian. Keino also
talked about his high altitude training center - the
Kip Keino High Performance Training Centre
(kipkeino HPTC). The motto for Keino's life seems to be "You come
with nothing, you leave with nothing" which he uses to illustrate the
importance of giving to the less fortunate.
Kip Keino's eldest son Ian, who runs kipkeino HPTC (checkout
their website),
also visited Cornell during his first trip to the United States (Ian
and Kip first went to Honolulu where Kip was honored by the Honolulu
Marathon). LetsRun.com's co-founders Weldon and Robert Johnson
could only laugh when Ian said it was an honor to meet the brothers
Johnson as LetsRun.com is apparently "big" in Kenya.The honor was
really in them meeting Ian and his father.
1988 Olympic 1500 meter champion, Peter Rono, also toured Ithaca with
Keino. To see photos from the event, please see below. To read Cornell
University's account of Keino's visit to Ithaca,
please click here. To read pre-visit coverage on Keino from the
Ithaca Journal,
please click here.