Former Kenyan Olympic 5000 champ and 5 time world cross champion seeks coaching job in USA

Those obstacles you mention should be taken care of (the financial obstacles) by the uni or school which wishes to hire (Ngugi) him. To me, it's a no brainer that a 5 time world cross champion and 5000 O G. winner (Seoul 1988) should be a hot coaching (Head or Assistant coach) recruit, but perhaps his illustrious CV is blinding me to a reality of U.S. coaching.

Surely this guy has potential. In our conversations Ngugi assured me that he could easily devise programs for U.S. runners aiming to run 13:30/28:00 which would be top runners at any D1 program in the U.S.

Any lawyers here who can give us some insight on hiring him as a private coach and giving him room and board in the US?
would he need a special workvisa? Can a simple LLC support that? What’s the timeline on getting something like this done?
not sure how universities work, but hypothetically, if we wanted him as a private track club coach here in the US, what are the legal and financial steps that should be taken in detail?

There is a provision for exceptional people to acquire green cards in the USA which can later be transferred to full citizenship and this normally in a window reserved for "exceptional entertainment people" or "sports people of high calibre" and I believe Steve Jones was one of the recipients of this type of green card fast track system.

I know that you ran in college here and must be somewhat familiar with the system, but I do believe the illustrious CV is blinding you to the reality of US coaching. It's not a high priority sport for most ADs and I doubt many of them would want to invest the effort in getting him a work visa. And why take money from your budget to bring him here and set him up when you can hire someone who can do this on his/her own? Maybe I'm overly cynical but I think it's more that I'm realistic. He might be able to set himself up as an online coach and make some money that way. I have a Kenyan friend who is doing this.

What is Ngugi exceptional at?

I wish anyone luck getting back on their feet. But as I recall it the ban was from 1993 and it was later reduced. Has he been coaching since, or what was he doing to make a living?

Source: 'East African Standard '

"

Ngugi had invested his money wisely and had built a four storey building in Nyahururu Town known as Boston House, named after "the town I won my last race".
Ngugi, who also operated a wholesale shop in Nyahururu, had his business targeted next. " NSSF were my tenants and one morning they just left to a building owned by a Laikipia politician," says Ngugi. "They then started terrorising my family and my son was once shot in a botched robbery".
Unlike in 1992 when in snowing conditions he reclaimed his world title at Carlos Lopes, Portugal Ngugi never recovered from this. After two years in the cold he got a reprieve but by this time he had grown from 60 kg to 100 kg . He was finished and concentrated on doing long-distance transport, which later became a soft target of highway robbers.
A man who used to earn approximately $100,000 each year from prize money and appearance fees Ngugi is now hiding away from creditors and says as much.
"I had taken loans hoping I could repay with the track money," he says. But all the fleet of lorries, the Nyahururu building and his farm and palatial home are all gone.
"One day someone just came and cut short my career, but I have to go on. I have accepted what has happened"
To cap it all Ngugi has been thrown out of the army with no pension and into oblivion. From obscurity he came, to obscurity he has gone.
Source: East African Standard

The Kenyan athletics federation at the time maintained that they had informed all the athletes about the new out of competition testing.

Given the almost 250 Kenyan doping busts, near entirely in distance running, since Ngugi became the first Kenyan to be sanctioned, it seems to me that it isn't so easy to dismiss it as a 'misunderstanding', especially perhaps as Ngugi was among the very first of the 'African invasion'.

Yes, it's possible that Ngugi was entirely innocent, and his version of events are the truth, but it's at least equally possible that he and other elite Kenyans in the 80's were blood doping, which as you know takes a lot longer to clear than EPO, hence the refusal to be tested.

Note that the brother of Ngugi's teammate Paul Kipkoech was busted for EPO use.

Ngugi was an exceptional runner with 5 world cross titles (86,87,88,89,92) and Olympic Games 5000 champion, in Seoul, where he opened a huge gap after 1 km and ran in splendid isolation until the end, despite attempts by Castro et.al to close the gap. That was a lesson in tactics for non speed merchant finishers to replicate, but which no one, to my knowledge, ever replicated in the following years, decades.

It boggles the mind, that this guy does not have some role in teaching youngsters or others how he reached that stratospheric level. Makes you want to cry at the apparent injustice. Let's give this icon a good break in his final work/productive years. He deserves it.

1987 world cross country championships was the year Kenya really proved that they have a genetic advantage over the rest of the world. Here are the top 3 kenyans from that year (finished 1,2,5)

1 : John Ngugi - banned for refusing to take out of competition test.

2 : Paul Kipkoech - younger brother banned for EPO positive.

3 : Some Muge - father of Mathew Kisorio, banned for testing positive for steroids at the 2012 world championships (also claimed that there was state sponsored doping in Kenya).

Ngugi's life was seriously damaged by that out of competition test in which the testers did not present themselves in the correct way and gave him no chance to provide the samples in a transparent and cordial way. Difficult to go retro active but I feel that this man, Ngugi, should be compensated for what was an (verging on) abhorrent way to treat a former world champion.

So why does John Ngugi think he can coach mzungu?

Good runner in his day, but if can’t manage his own running career, navigate drug tresting protocols, manage his finances, and organize his life, how’s he going to do those things for college students in a foreign country?

You, and no doubt he, have a massive misunderstanding of what a college coach or professional coach does.

If he needs to rely on someone to beg on the internet for a coaching job, he’s wasting his time.

First, you need to a have a university degree. Then, there’s a drug infraction. Then, he needs to have coaching experience, perhaps at the high school level. Then, he needs to negotiate the university HR system and apply for coaching jobs that have an advertised opening.

Coaches are university employees, and have to navigate the Human Resources system of the university. Asking for a job for someone else on an Internet forum is actually making getting a job even more unlikely. It screams ignorance of so many aspects of living and working in the US.

dose of reality

I think Daniel Komen did something similar in the 5000m at the '97 world championship.

Not that I disagree with the general gist here, but blood transfusion in itself still cannot be directly detected when done properly. Back then, you could get caught only if:

1) You used someone else's blood. Or:

2) Your test shows abnormal levels of plastic residues stemming from the blood's storage.

Only since 2009, you can get banned for abnormalities in your blood passport.

Plus, blood transfusions are very unlikely to have happened in Kenya in the 80s because of the poor infrastructure. Those Kenyans who doped in the 80s rather used steroids (yes, that would be motivation for test dodging).

Can he coach?

His resume isn't the question. Can he communicate with athletes and formulate a training plan? Most Kenyans have zero idea as how to train. They simply just did what the coach told them to do, and that was to HAMMER HARD all of the time until you broke. No thinking, just run HARD or go home.

Doesn't one need a college degree to coach at an American college/university?