Tragedy and fear are hard on the heels of Kenya's world-beaters

As the run-in to Beijing begins, the elite athletes of Kenya's beleaguered Eldoret region are just trying to survive. By Simon Turnbull

In the Athens of the North, the countdown to Beijing is about to begin. The Great Edinburgh International Cross Country meeting in Holyrood Park next Saturday is the first major event on the British athletics calendar in the year of the 29th Olympic Games. Fittingly, the star attraction is a runner who struck Olympic gold in the genuine Athens four years ago and who is highly fancied to do so again when the Beijing Games begin at eight seconds and eight minutes past eight o'clock, local time, on the morning of 8 August: 08.08.08.

For Kenenisa Bekele, the Ethiopian who holds the world record and world title at 10,000m, as well as the Olympic crown, the trip to Edinburgh will be a bittersweet journey. He was preparing to race in the 2005 event at Holyrood, running through woods on the outskirts of Addis Ababa, when his fiance and training partner, Alem Techale, collapsed and died. She was 18 and the reigning world youth 1500m champion. They were due to have been married in Addis in May that year.

Instead of racing in Edinburgh, Bekele was mourning at Techale's grave. But he has made the trip for the past two years, winning both races. This time he returns as a husband of two months. On 18 November he married Danawit Gebregziabher,an Ethiopian actress.

There is much to look forward to in 2008 for Bekele, the 25-year-old king of the distance-running world. In the men's 9km feature race next Saturday he faces Zersenay Tadese, the Eritrean who last year ended his five-year unbeaten run in cross-country races. In March he will be back on the Holyrood course, attempting to regain the world cross- country title. Then, in Beijing in August, there is his Olympic 10,000m crown to defend.

Happily for Bekele, tragedy has become a thing of the past. For some of his fellow East African runners, however, it has become a nightmare of the present. The tribal violence that erupted in Kenya last week in the wake of President Mwai Kibaki's disputed election victory has left many of the country's leading athletes in a state of fear. It also claimed the life of one Kenyan Olympic veteran.

In 1988, Lucas Sang ran for his country in the 4 x 400m relay at the Seoul Olympics. Last Monday, the day after Kibaki's victory was declared by the Kenyan Electoral Commission, prompting accusations of vote rigging and reprisals against members of Kibaki's economically dominant Kikuyu tribe, Sang was attacked by a mob near his farm in a village close to Eldoret. He was stoned and hacked with machetes before his body was burned. He was 45.

His corpse was identified on Wednesday by Noah Ngeny, the man who beat Hicham El Guerrouj to the Olympic 1500m gold in Sydney in 2000. According to Martin Keino, the son of Kip Keino, the Olympic 1500m and 3,000m steeplechase champion who launched Kenya's middle- and long-distance running success story four decades ago, "one of the ways they recognised him was there was a piece of his tracksuit still not burnt on the leg".

Keino Jnr, a former pacemaking specialist on the inter-national track circuit, said Sang had been mistaken for a Kikuyu by fellow members of the Kalenjin tribe, who have been responsible for most of the 90 deaths that have been reported in the Eldoret area since last weekend. "It was at night, in the dark," Keino said. "Tensions were high. They mistook him for someone else, I guess. No one would have done this if they knew it was him. He was so respected."

Luke Kibet could hardly have been shown much more respect when he returned from the World Championships in Osaka early last September. The 24-year-old was afforded a hero's welcome in Eldoret after ending Kenya's 20-year wait for a men's world marathon champion, since Douglas Wakiihuri's success in Rome in 1987. For the past week he has been in hospital inEldoret, recovering from an attack by a Kikuyu mob.

Kibet was struck on the head by a stone, suffering a wound that required 12 stitches and what was described as "light brain shock". He has cancelled plans to compete in the Egmond Half-Marathon in Holland on 13 January. A winner of the Great South Run 10-mile race in Portsmouth in October, he is due to return to British soil to compete in the London Marathon on 13 April.

Kibet is one of the new generation of world-beaters who have emerged from the Eldoret area. The town, 150 miles north-west of the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, has produced most of the country's renowned middle- and long-distance runners in the past 40 years. Four of the five Kenyans who won world titles in Osaka last August hail from within a 20-mile radius of Eldoret: Kibet, the steeplechaser Brimin Kipruto and 800m runners Alfred Kirwa and Janeth Jepkosgei.

Twenty miles away lies Iten, the home town of Lornah Kiplagat, the women's world cross-country champion. Though now a Dutch citizen, she spends much of her time in Iten, running a high-altitude training centre with her husband and manager, Pieter Langerhorst. The complex, in the Rift Valley 8,000ft above sea level, was paid for by Kiplagat's earnings from the road-running circuit and built to give female Kenyan runners an outlet from the enduring constrictions of a male-dominated society.

Kiplagat, who also lives in Holland, has been at the centre preparing for the Dubai Mara-thon on 18 January (which has also attracted Bekele's predecessor as the leading light in distance running, his fellow Ethio-pian Haile Gebreselassie, holderof the men's world record for the marathon). Kiplagat and her husband have spent a sleepless week at their Iten camp, fearing for their safety and that of the foreign athletes who train there.

Langerhorst described the situation earlier in the week as "unbelievable". "We had to feed some Kalenjin warriors who were hidden in the forest near our house. Otherwise they would get hungry, invade our camp and attack us to get the food," he said. "We had no option. Things are very, very bad." They have been so bad, in fact, that Langerhorst has arranged with the Dutch embassy in Nairobi for a 35-seater plane to be flown from Amsterdam to take the camp's guests to safety in Europe.

As for his wife, her Olympic plans have been thrown into chaos. Beyond the Dubai race, she has her world cross-countrytitle to defend in Edinburgh in March and, after that, the Olympic marathon in Beijing, in which she is likely to line up as one of the main rivals to Paula Radcliffe, whom she relieved of the world 20km record the autumn before last.

Vivian Cheruiyot has Olympic ambitions too. The 24-year-old, a 5,000m silver medallist at the World Championships last year, lives at a training camp run by Pace Sports Management at Kaptagat, on the outskirts of Eldoret. Luckily for her, she has been in Europe for the past month, based near Pace's Teddington headquarters in south-west London. She runs in the 6km women's race in Edinburgh on Saturday.

"Fortunately, we closed the Kaptagat camp before Christmas," Ricky Simms, Cheruiyot's coach and manager and a director of Pace, said. "Noah Ngeny is in charge of the camp, and in case there were any problems with the elections he sent everyone back to their home areas and told them not to report back until after the new year. So fortunately the camp has been closed. There was no risk there.

"Talking to our Kenyan athletes in the last couple of days, everyone's just staying at home. They're scared to go out. I don't think many of them have seen that much trouble but that's because they haven't gone much outside the door. All the athletes I've spoken to, I've been telling them to make sure they're all right, to stay at home don't go into town, don't take any chances. The thing is, Eldoret is normally such a peaceful, quiet place, up in the hills. You would never expect there would be any trouble in a place like that.

"I think if you stay in your own tribal area it's not so bad. It's in places where tribes meet, in Eldoret, that the trouble has been. The athletes are saying the biggest problem now is that people are running out of food and they can't go to town to get money.

"The death of Lucas Sang has hit a lot of people hard because he was well known among the athletes and well respected. Noah knew him quite well because of business connections. He went to identify the body."

Yesterday, Sang's body was laid to rest in Eldoret. Nearby, one of the young athletes coached and managed by Simms was sticking close to home. Linet Masai, the 18-year-old world junior cross- country champion, had been due to fly to Europe last Monday. She was entered for the Belfast International Cross Country meeting yesterday.

"We looked at booking flights out for her," Simms said, "but I knew she was scared. She's only young. I said to her, 'Look, if you're uncomfortable coming, don't do it. It's only a race. It's no big deal, compared to people losing their lives'."

The main events

5 Jan: Belfast Cross Country.

12 Jan: Edinburgh Cross Country.

26 Jan: Glasgow indoors.

1 Feb: Millrose Games, N Yorks. 2 feb: Stuttgart Indoors (Ger).

9-10 Feb: World Indoor Trials and UK Championships, Sheffield.

10 Feb: Karlsrhe Indoors (Ger).

16 Feb: Norwich Union Indoor Grand Prix, Birmingham.

17 Feb: Stockholm Indoors.

17 Feb: Tokyo Marathon.

7-9 Mar: World Indoors, Valencia.

30 Mar: World Cross Country, Edinburgh.

13 Apr: London and Rotterdam Marathons.

21 Apr: Boston Marathon.

9 May: Doha GP (Qatar).

11 May: Paralympics World Cup, Manchester.

24 May: Hengelo GP (Holl).

31 May: Reebok GP, New York.

31 May-1 June: Gotzis multi-events (Aut).

1 June: Berlin Golden League.

6 june: Oslo Golden League.

7-8 June: Arles multi-events (Fr).

8 June: Prefontaine Classic, Eugene (US); Norwich Union Classic (tbc).

12 June: Ostrava GP (Czech Rep).

16 june: Athens GP.

29 June-6 July: US Championships, Eugene (US).

8-13 July: World Juniors, Bydgoszcz.

11 July: Rome Golden League.

11-13 July: Olympic trials and UK Championships, Birmingham.

18 July: Paris Golden League.

22 July: Stockholm GP.

25-26 July: Norwich Union Super GP, Crystal Palace.

29 July: Monaco GP.

6-24 Aug: Olympics, Beijing.