There must be something about Kiprotich.
Stephen Kiprotich, 23, Ugandan national, won the marathon in
London’s Great Games extravaganza in 2 h. 08 min. 01 sec.
yesterday, ahead of two Kenyans, the second of whom is Wilson
Kipsang Kiprotich, who ran the course in 2/09/37; the second place
finisher, if you want to know, is Abel Kirui at 2/08/27. There was
an Kiprotich on the French team, first name Abraham, but he dropped
out of the race.
The name Kiprotich indicates that you come from a family within
a clan of the Nandi people, who are classified by observers as
falling within the Nilotic groups, East Africa, upper Nile, that
area. So you will find Kiprotich’s among Kenyans, Ugandans, South
Sudanese.
When the Kenyans are described as great distance runners,
usually the reference is to a Nandi.
Ethno-cultural considerations aside, it was a great marathon,
with the young Stephen Kiprotich pulling a fast one — making his
move, as distance runners say — at about three miles from the
finish line and getting narrowly ahead of Kirui. The Kenyan team
was troubled by the tragic death in
May 2011 of its leader, the defending champion Samuel Wanjiru,
who won his medal at 2/06/32 at the youngest age ever for this
discipline, 21. Having won the London marathon last April, Wilson
Kipsang was expected to prevail, but there it is. Another miracle
marathoner was Emile Zatopek, the humble son of a Moravian
carpenter who was a record-breaker in the five and ten thousand
meters races and who ran his very first marathon, in fact, the day
after he won these events at the 1952 Games. He won, with a time,
2/23/03, that was more than two minutes ahead of the number two, an
Argentine named Reinaldo Gomo.
I owe this astonishing historical information to
The Complete Book of the Olympics, 2012 Edition, by David
Wallechinsky and Jaime Loucky, a treasure trove of Sports Facts.
True, the book is focused on the quadrennial Games that Mr.
Pleszczynski and I preferred not to mention by name during the past
two weeks in order not to distract from the National League pennant
race as well as Yankee Dominance in the American League (with due
apologies to our friend Larry Thornberry), as well as the Citi Open
(ex-Legg Mason), which took place, as everyone knows, at the W. H.
FitzGerald Tennis Center on 16th St., NW.
But that is all in the past, and so are the Games, and so we can
say it. This was, notwithstanding this that and the other thing, a
wonderful Olympics. These were Great Games. We are delighted to
have followed from afar, I am still chafing from Mr. Tyrrell’s
decision not to attend, wherein I might have talked him into
letting me go along for the ride and we might have had tea (or
beer) with Mr. Boris Johnson, London mayor and Greeter
Extraordinaire for the Games. My aim was to persuade Mr. Johnson to
rise to the call and enter the U.S. presidential race, at least as
V.P. on the Republican ticket, seeing as how he is New York born.
Now it is too late, and I will not mention it anymore, because now
is the time to close ranks, let bygones be bygones and failed
opportunities be forgot, and turn the page and charge toward
vict’ry. Like young Stephen Kiprotich, who ran a truly brilliant
and inspired race, and while it is too bad for the Kenyans (who did
not win gold in the five and ten thousand meters, either), it was a
fine day for the sport, and the marathon, like the decathlon, like
so many others, you have to admit, it is the stuff of dreams, but
better because it is where dreams meet reality and give us a small
brief vision of truth.
And this despite the horrendous record of the sportocrats who
run these events, profit handsomely from them, humiliate and
oppress the better men than they who compete, and generally remind
us that in every endeavor, there are those who do and those who
spoil. And from the morons — and, measuring my words, wicked and
probably corrupt individuals at the AAU and IOC who brought down
the great James Francis (Jim) Thorpe after the 1912 Games
(violating their own rules in the process), the American sportocrat
supremo Avery Brundage — whose record, in truth, is far more
interesting and nuanced than that of most sportocrats, or crats
generally, and must be understood to be appreciated, the appalling
snobs who tried to prevent the great Althea Gibson from breaking
the color line in tennis, the moron (corrupt?) head of the
International Amateur Basketball Federation (a front
organization?), one L. William Jones, who took it upon himself —
though he had no authority to do so — to give the 1972 basketball
final to the communistic team from Soviet Russia, and many
more.
Note, though, that one of the pleasures of sports is that they
bring out the good qualities with the bad ones in human beings. Jim
Thorpe was staunchly defended by the Swedes who, after all, were
the hosts and organizers of the 1912 Games and it was only due to
the superior fire power (money, political influence) of the AAU and
the IOC that they were unable to save Thorpe’s medals. Following
the disgraceful attitude of the current head of the IOC to refuse
to make so much as a gesture toward the remembrance of the Israeli
athletes murdered at the Munich Games 40 years ago, an athlete who
could be his great grand daughter, American gymnast Alexandra
Raisman, showed up his callousness by making her own gesture, and a
beautiful one it was.
And as beauty goes, it was abundant at London. The U.S.
basketball team — just take it at face value and worry another day
about the issue of professionalism vs. amateurism at the Olympics,
which basketball probably epitomizes more than any other sport —
faced teams that included many of their own NBA teammates and
rivals, who could and did give them thrilling runs for their money,
notably in great semi (Lithuania) and final (Spain) games that went
down to the wire. Liberated from the pressures of the pro hoops
season, LeBron James and the gang played with a grace and
generosity that we do not often see. Some deep pride and goodness
brought out in these hugely talented but spoiled young men by the
idea of playing for the Stars and Stripes? Something in Coach Mike
Krzyzewski’s leadership? Sports do have the capacity to change your
life, if only for two weeks.
And what a gorgeous race that 5,000 meters was, wherein Great
Britain’s Mo Farah beat out Ethiopia’s Dejen Gebremeskel by
scarcely a third of a second — a third of a second, over five
kilometers! A week earlier he had won the 10,000 meters by the same
kind of margin over his friend and training partner, America’s
Galen Rupp. Russia’s Yuliya Zaripova leaping to gold in the women’s
3,000 meters steeples, kissing her icon in happiness at the end,
was moving indeed, as was Ethiopia’s tiny gold medalist in the
women’s 5,000 meters, Meseret Defar, clutching an image of the
Virgin and breaking down in tears at the end. Oh the tales you can
tell. And this is long-distance admiration. Next time, I shall
insist Mr. Tyrrell make the scene, and get us good seats, too.
Sports are gorgeous and you try to keep them in perspective, but
so do you try to keep many other things in perspective, and you
usually fail. I am not sure why they make such an extravaganza
of these Olympic Games whose beauty used to be enhanced by the
qualities of simplicity that were part of the original idea as
dreamed up — and made real — by the Baron Pierre de Coubertin, a
French person of the late 19th century. At the first Games, the
marathon, since we are on to that, was fittingly won by a Greek,
Spiridon Louis — again, I owe this to the diligent research of
Wallechinsky & Co. and their brilliantly understated (and often
subtly witty) summaries of legendary athletes and events — who
arrived at the Games with shoes provided by his neighbors in his
romantic little old Aegean village. There is some doubt whether
Louis was a farmer or a soldier, actually, but no matter, he won
the very first modern marathon (W. indicates that Herodotus makes
no mention of an original one, though he covered the battle that
gave it its name) in 2/58/50.
Speaking of shoes, there was a marathoner who ran shoeless (and
won), Ethiopia’s Abebe Bikila (2/15//16 in 1960 and, again winning
gold four years later, 2/12/11). Sadly, he was terribly injured in
a car accident a few years later.
Also on shoes, the first winner of Olympic tennis was an
Irishman who played in street shoes, because he happened to be in
Athens on vacation the day before the Games began and a pal of his
from Oxford persuaded him to sign up. Greece was a little backward
in those days, and there was no Modell’s where to get gear. They
faced each other in the final and, like gentlemen, John Pius Boland
offered to forfeit — how could he take the prize away from the
friend who had invited him in? — and Dionysios Kasdaglis would
hear nothing of it. Boland, the authors of The Complete Book of
the Olympics tell us, was an Irish nationalist who went on to
have a great career as a barrister.
The astonishing speed feats of Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps
reminded me of another speed artist, Wilma Rudolph, who overcame
childhood polio to triumph in the 1960 Games at Rome and become, to
use the current cliché, a living legend.
It was perfectly in keeping with his lousy manners that IOC boss
Jacques Rogge (internationally ranked rugby union in his youth,
which shows you can be a great athlete and not learn anything)
begrudged Bolt his hamming, which included self-designation as a
legend. Legends are as legends do and it is not by making Rogge and
co-conspirators rich (he said Bolt would be a legend if he returns
to future Games and wins some more, increasing, the sportswriter
Dan Wetzel was quick to point out, the IOC coffers) that one
becomes a legend, but by the kind of human being and citizen one
becomes, presumably, in relation to sports, aided by the virtues
learned on the playing fields.
Thorpe, for example, lived his life, served his country, was a
gentleman, scarcely complained, even when he was, in all but legal
fine print, cheated out of the rights he was told he had to the
film made of his life (with Burt Lancaster playing him). Bob
Mathias, a great American decathlon winner, went on to serve
honorably in Congress, a rarity. Eric Liddell, the Scottish runner
whom many know through the film Chariots of Fire,
practiced his Christian faith as a missionary in China, where he
perished during World War II. There are many more, many many more.
Yes, it is true sports, for all the sportocrats and profiteers and
for all the wicked and mean qualities they only too often bring out
in people, sports do have the capacity to make better individuals,
in body and soul. I do not mean to inject politics into this
sentimental and childish editorial, but it is, in fact, telling
that Mitt Romney gave of himself to rescue the Salt Lake City
Winter Olympics in 2002 and did not become a sportocrat in the
process, and I think it says much for the future of British public
leadership that London’s wise, erudite, and witty mayor, Boris
Johnson, led the organization of this summer’s Games with such
exuberance and infectious élan.
