Distance running is not a massive sport in kenya - it's media profile ranks behind soccer and basketball by some way. But yes it serves a role that it will never achieve here
Abs no slight to Mo Farah or any other leading Brit in his slipstream - but if we think that but for a few variations in training support, race planning, untimely injuries etc, we could have a squad of native Brits at MF's ultimate level, we are perhaps a bit naive. And yes I remember a great 5k photofinish of Hamer, Buckner, Denmark and Antibo (1991?) where the 3rd Brit ran 13.10.
Both MF and his coach are on record on what a very big gap there is to get from 13.09 to 12.59 and I really doubt that any of us posting here have much credibility to argue against that - unless Mr Moorcroft joins the thread.
A leading european coach who has 3 x sub 3.32 1500 guys to his name, incl 1 OG champion, in a country which doesn't do PC quite like GB, said ' If everything were equal, black runners would win all the medals. But things aren't equal and we play that to our advantage'. We can all think of various (legal) ways that this plays itself out I'm sure.
The following may read like I'm minimising Mottram's performances, which isn't the intention at all, the guy is as good as any Caucasian there has been at 3k/5k, but in two of his biggest races of 2006 - CG 5k and World Cup 3k, he achieved super performances, but most of the very best Africans weren;t in those races. Will be interesting to see where T+F News rate him in 2006 (if they still do those annual merit rankings, forgive my ignorance here) - just a paper exercise I know but I think they are coldly objective in their analysis of performance.