As day breaks over the small Kenyan town of Iten, its dusty paths come alive with groups of runners. Often the groups are followed by children headed to school.
Some of the runners are top Kenyan athletes. Others travel from farther away.
All are here because of Iten’s altitude. At about 2,400 meters above sea-level, it has produced some of the best long-distance runners in the world.
The town is about 350 kilometers northwest of Nairobi, the Kenyan capital. To serve the ever-growing interest from both professional and amateur athletes, hotels and other short-stay housing businesses continue to open around Iten.
Ryan Mex, a partly professional runner and trainer, came from the southern European island nation of Malta. He brought three athletes with him to get a competitive edge ahead of his country’s marathon season. Marathons are foot races with a distance of about 42 kilometers.
Mex is visiting Iten for the first time.
“Next time I want to come with a larger group since we really like the training environment here,” he said. "This is the best place in the world to come for a training camp.”
Town produces Olympic champions
Iten is home to about 42,000 people, mostly farmers. It has also been a temporary home to many world champions, including two-time Olympic gold medal winning runners, Eliud Kipchoge and David Rudisha. Both are Kenyan.
Also, British four-time Olympic champion Mo Farah would train in Iten for months at a time.
The town was declared a World Athletics Heritage Landmark in 2019 and even calls itself the “Home of Champions.”
Lornah Kiplagat, a Kenyan-born three-time Olympian for the Netherlands, attended high school in Iten. She is the 2008 world half-marathon champion and now owns a training center in the town.
“If you train at 2,400 meters, your lungs expand, your red blood cells increase, and so when you go to low altitude you feel like you are flying,” Kiplagat explained.
Amanal Petros, a top marathoner from Germany, spends six months at Kiplagat’s center every year. Born in the Eritrean highlands, he was used to running at high altitude. He says Iten’s high altitude is not the only reason he keeps returning to train.
“I’ve trained in many places in the USA and Europe,” he said. “Organizing a training partner in Europe is not easy. But in Iten, the home of champions, wherever you go you find a lot of athletes who can train with you.”
Jean Paul Fourier opened the Kerio View Hotel in 2002 with a just few rooms at first. It now holds as many as 50 guests and includes a fitness center.
“I made a small investment and it has really grown,” Fourier said.
The main training season goes from April to September.
Before the boom
One man here still remembers what Iten was like before all this happened. His name is Brother Colm O’Connell. He is a former leader of St. Patrick’s High School. Several champion runners attended the school including Rudisha, Vivian Cheruiyot, Matthew Birir and Brimin Kipruto.
O’Connell first came to Iten to teach in 1976. He says that back then, the town was just a few houses and St. Patrick’s School.
“That was really the starting point of what Iten eventually became, what we see today,” O’Connell said. Its huge change began “when the sport became professional," he added.
"Before that, athletes were confined to their place of work. But when professionalism came in, athletes could now sit down with their managers and with shoe companies and decide no, I can become a full-time career athlete.”
O’Connell went on to reform the athletics program at St. Patrick’s, and 25 of his students became world champions. Some of them came back to run their own athletics programs.
The town around the school expanded fast, as runners from all over the world discovered the training possibilities it had. O’Connell estimates there are around 500 visiting runners in the town at any one time throughout the main season.
“We see fun runners, we have runners with personal goals, we have people running a marathon to fundraise," he said. "In other words, running is a sport for everybody and it has something to offer everybody.”
I’m Caty Weaver.
