KIPTARAGON, Kenya — On a May afternoon, as a cold rain pelted the roof of his brother’s country home, Henry Rono sipped on a cup of tea and reflected on what he described as his greatest achievement.
For most running fans — especially those who came of age during the sport’s boom years in the 1970s — his excellence seems obvious. Stifled by Kenya’s boycott of the 1976 and 1980 Summer Games, Rono never saw Olympic glory. But his 1978 season on the track was arguably the most notable in the sport’s history.
In 81 days, as a 26-year-old student at Washington State University, he set world records in four disciplines: the 3,000-meter, 5,000-meter, 10,000-meter and 3,000-meter steeplechase. It was a feat unmatched by anyone before or since: Rarely does a runner with the stamina to break new ground over 25 laps has the speed to do so over seven and a half laps of obstacles. But decades later, Rono hardly realizes his importance. Instead, he’s most proud of a time later in his life when he enrolled in a community college and finally achieved what he said had long eluded him: a fluency in the English language.
“Running was second nature to me,” he said. “Education was my weakness”
If Rono’s attitude toward his writing defies convention, it is because of his character: in the nearly half-century since he first left Kiptaragon, a collection of small farmsteads in the Nandi Hills of Kenya’s high Rift Valley region, His life has unfolded as a remarkable, if largely random, “Forrest Gump”-style adventure – one that has taken him from the pinnacle of athletics to the depths of addiction and almost every corner of the United States in between.
Today, after more than three decades, he is back in Kenya, sober at last, among the avocado trees and bougainvillea flowers of his youth. Rono is hardly satisfied: he had returned expecting a job coaching aspiring athletes, but local officials told him on arrival there was no room in the budget. He has become largely estranged from his wife and two children, who live on the properties he bought at the height of his running career. Still, at 70, he is far more than the fallen hero he represents in the world of elite running.
“Henry is a more complex and lovable character than he’s usually portrayed,” said Tomas Radcliffe, an English professor at Central New Mexico Community College who edited Rono’s self-published memoir. “His goals and motivations are pure to him. That is perhaps the most extraordinary thing about him.”
Rono’s early years were marked by tragedy. A bicycle accident prevented him from walking by the age of six. The death of his father in a tractor accident around this time caused trouble for the family: Rono went to school for years and not while his mother scraped the fees together. When he finished seventh grade at the age of 19, he was drawn to running, inspired by Kipchoge Keino, who was from a nearby village. Keino’s 1,500m victory at the 1968 Olympics ushered in an era of Kenyan running dominance that Rono would soon enter.
His talent blossomed when he was recruited into the army, where his duties consisted primarily of training. Rono’s big break came before the 1976 Montreal Olympics. He was called up to the Kenya squad and would pose a major threat in both the 5,000 meters and the Steeplechase. But the Kenyan government announced an 11-hour boycott, like most African countries, in protest at the admission of New Zealand, whose national rugby team was touring apartheid South Africa.
“I thought this man was going to come home with two gold medals,” said Keino, who coached the Kenyan team in Canada before the boycott was announced.
There was consolation: After a 1973 court ruling nullified an NCAA rule that imposed limits on foreign athletes deemed “above average,” American college coaches increasingly recruited Africans, particularly in track and field. Two months after missing the Montreal Games, Rono found himself in Pullman, Washington, where a young coach, John Chaplin, was nurturing a talented group of Kenyan runners despite never having attended high school.
When Rono was struggling to adjust to school and life in the United States, running was his way of “releasing tension.” In his sophomore year at Snake River Canyon, he shifted into a new gear. Rono didn’t just break four world records: He obliterated them in low-key meets with little competition, on a diet of cheeseburgers and Budweiser. His step wasn’t the most graceful. But his willpower and massive chest were unmatched overall.
“I could tell him exactly what to run, exactly how to do it, and he would do it,” Chaplin said.
After this climax, most accounts of Rono’s life entered the long, tragic denouement. While there were a few more moments of glory, including a 1981 season that started with a beer belly and ended with another 5,000-meter world record, its shine quickly faded.
Despite a college degree and a contract with Nike, he sunk into a cocoon of personal struggles. Discouraged by friction with sports officials at home, he began drinking with increasing regularity. Like many Kenyan stars of future generations, he was careless with money: he lost track of bank accounts, had cash stolen on planes and was lured into bad investments by scammers. He was soon drifting across the United States, in and out of friends’ guest rooms and alcohol rehab. He parked cars in Portland, Oregon, rang the bell at the Salvation Army in Salt Lake City, and pushed wheelchair users at the Albuquerque airport.
There were more uplifting phases. In the 1990s, after settling in New Mexico, he spent time as a special education teacher and coach. He coached collegiate athletes in the Navajo Nation and rising elites in Albuquerque, and was invited to stay in Yemen to train national athletes. Kris Houghton and Solomon Kandie, New Mexico runners who set personal bests under his tutelage, described him as a “wise sage” with a reverence for hills and a deep appreciation for the mental aspects of the sport. “He loves the purity of someone who wants to improve,” Houghton said.
Around this time, while still unfamiliar with English, his third language, Rono went back to school and eventually took courses in poetry, advanced grammar and creative writing before publishing his memoir Olympic Dream in 2010. Only one of the book’s 29 chapters describes his famous 1978 season.
“He never spoke about the records,” Chaplin said. “He wasn’t someone who would go around and pound his chest and say, ‘How awesome I am.'”
Eventually, as Rono got older and paying the rent became a bigger struggle, Kenya started calling. In 2019, he set foot in the land of his birth for the first time since the Reagan presidency, settling into his brother’s home on the same lot as the thatched cottage they grew up in. Not everything went as planned: disputes with his family over his possessions, including a farm and a house in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, have angered him. He longs to return to the coaching business. Aside from church and saunas – he’s always preached the virtues of sweating – Rono rarely ventures outside.
But when he shares his adventure stories, he also exudes a sense of satisfaction – and appreciation for what running has given him, even if his records meant less to him than they do to fans of the sport.
Running, he said, opened a way: to a world beyond the village of Kiptaragon, and an unexpected way back.