One May afternoon, as a cold rain beat down on the roof of his brother’s country house, Henry Rono sipped his tea and reflected on what he called his greatest achievement.
To most racing fans — especially those who came of age in the 1970s, the sport’s boom years — his hallmark seems obvious. Restrained by Kenyans’ boycott of the 1976 and 1980 Olympics, Rono never experienced Olympic glory. But his 1978 season was one of the most memorable in track and field history.
Over the course of 81 days, as a 26-year-old student at Washington State University, he set world records in four events: 3,000 meters, 5,000 meters, 10,000 meters and 3,000 meters hurdles. It was a feat that no one has accomplished before or since.
Rarely does a runner with the stamina to break new ground over 25 laps have the speed to do it in 7 and a half laps with hurdles. However, for Rono, decades later, its importance barely registers. Instead, he prides himself on a later stage in life, when he enrolled at a community college and finally achieved what had long attracted him: mastery of the English language.
“Running was second nature to me,” he said. “Education was my weakness.”
Rono’s attitude to his records defies convention, and that’s his character: in nearly half a century since he left Kiptaragon, a cluster of sites in the Nandi Hills in Kenya’s high-altitude Rift Valley region , his life unfolded as a remarkable, if largely accidental, “Forrest Gump”-style adventure — which took him from the height of athletics to the depths of addiction and to almost every corner of America.
Today, after more than three decades away, he has returned to Kenya, finally sober, among the avocado trees and bougainvillea blossoms of his youth. Rono isn’t settled: He came back expecting a job coaching up-and-coming athletes, but local officials told him there were no funds.
He is largely estranged from his wife and two children, who live in properties he bought at the height of his racing career. Still, at 70, he’s much more than the fallen hero he’s come to represent in the world of elite racing.
“Henry is such a more complex and captivating figure than he is usually portrayed,” said Tomas Radcliffe, a professor of English at Central New Mexico Community College who edited Rono’s self-published memoir. “Your goals and his motivations are pure. That is perhaps the most exceptional thing about him.”
Rono’s early years were marked by tragedy. A bicycle accident left him unable to walk until he was 6 years old. The death of his father in a tractor accident at that time forced the family to struggle: Rono was in and out of school for years while his mother collected the change. He was drawn to running when he completed seventh grade at 19, inspired by Kipchoge Keino, who came from a nearby village. Keino’s victory in the 1500 meters at the 1968 Olympics ushered in an era of Kenyan dominance in the race, which Rono would be a part of.
His talent blossomed when he was recruited into the army, where his duties consisted mainly of training. Rono’s big break came before the 1976 Montreal Olympics. He was named to the Kenyan team and was expected to be a major threat in the 5,000 meters and steeplechase. But Kenya’s government announced a boycott at the last minute, joining most African countries in protesting the inclusion of New Zealand, whose national rugby team was touring apartheid South Africa.
“I thought this man would go 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 wrecked an NCAA (National University Athletic Association) rule that set limits on foreign athletes deemed “overage,” American college coaches were increasingly recruiting Africans, particularly for racing. Two months after missing the Montreal Games, despite never having attended high school, Rono found himself in Pullman, Washington, where a young coach, John Chaplin, was forming a talented group of Kenyan runners.
As Rono struggled to adjust to school and life in the States, running was his way of “releasing the tension.” In his second year of training at Snake River Canyon, he got into a new groove.
Not only did Rono break four world records, he destroyed them with a low-key, low-competition union with a diet of cheeseburgers and beer. His step wasn’t the most graceful. But his willpower and potency were unparalleled.
“I could tell him exactly what to do, exactly how to do it, and he did it,” Chaplin said.
It was after this heyday, in most accounts of Rono’s life, that the prolonged and tragic denouement began. While there were a few more moments of glory, including a season in 1981 that started with a beer belly and ended with yet another world record in the 5,000 meters, his luster quickly faded.
Despite a college degree and a contract with Nike, he has retreated into a cocoon of personal struggles. Discouraged by friction with the athletics authorities in his country, he began drinking regularly. Like many Kenyan stars of future generations, he was careless with money: he lost control of bank accounts, had money stolen on planes, and was lured into bad investments by crooks. He was soon roaming the United States, in and out of friends’ guest rooms and alcohol addiction rehab. He valeted cars in Portland, Oregon, rang the Salvation Army bell in Salt Lake City and pushed people in wheelchairs at the airport in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
There were more uplifting periods. In the 1990s, after settling in New Mexico, Rono spent time as a special education teacher and coach. He has worked with college athletes in the Navajo Nation and aspiring elite in Albuquerque and has been invited to a stint in Yemen to develop national-caliber athletes there. Kris Houghton and Solomon Kandie, New Mexico-based runners who set personal bests under him, described him as a “great sage”, with a reverence for the mountains and a deep appreciation for the mental aspects of the sport. “He loves the purity of someone who seeks to improve himself,” Houghton said.
It was around this time, still lacking confidence in English, his third language, that Rono returned to school, eventually progressing to classes in poetry, advanced grammar, and creative writing, before publishing his 2010 memoir, “Olympic Dream.” [Sonho olímpico]. Only one of the book’s 29 chapters details its famous 1978 season.
“He never talked about the records,” Chaplin said. “He wasn’t someone to go around beating his chest and saying ‘how great I am’.”
After all, when Rono got older and paying rent got harder, Kenya started looking for him. In 2019, for the first time since Ronald Reagan’s presidency, he set foot in his native country, settling in his brother’s home on the same grounds as the thatched hut where they had grown up. Not everything went as planned: disputes with his family over his properties, which included a farm and a house in the capital Nairobi, left him resentful. He longs to get back to training. Aside from church and going to the sauna – he has always preached the virtues of sweating – Rono rarely goes out.
Still, as he narrates his stories of past adventures, he also projects a sense of contentment — and appreciation for what the race has given him, even if his records mean less to him than they do to fans of the sport.
The race paved the way, Rono said, to a world beyond Kiptaragon’s village and an unexpected turn.
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