Live to run, run to live

Abebe Bikila, Kip Keino, Henry Rono … Years ago, maybe thirty or forty, African long-distance runners arrived on trains. Meerutz Yefter, Muhammad Qadeer …

They were almost exclusively Kenyans and Ethiopians, black paper in a cloud of white athletes, many Europeans, and few Americans. Athletics was a fan of communication.

It was until the 1980s, the running boom, the rise of globalization, the foray of multinational companies as suppliers of shoes and dollars. With TV as a show, money was flowing into athletics.

See yourself on TV Africa discovered itself. We are witnessing a shift in history: Now, some Europeans note white in a cloud of black athletes. John Ngoji, Paul Tergat, Haile Gebrasilassi, Khaled Skah, Salah Hassou, Derarto Tollo or Tigla Loroupe won: they are an illusion. They are no longer an anomaly, but they are breaking records in Kenyans, Ethiopians and Moroccans, accompanied by more and more talented Kenyans, Ethiopians and Moroccans.

Africa sees sports as a vital project, as a way to escape hunger

Africa ran and rode on the dollar: now athletics is a vital undertaking as a way to escape hunger.

This was the circuit: European multinational corporations sent their technicians, sporting missionaries, to the heights of the Rift Valley. They opened training centers and mined minerals – boys and girls who fled to school – and introduced them to the Western world, in a process that was brought back. its name win-win. It all started in Kenya and Ethiopia, before it reached Eritrea, Tanzania and now Uganda. Kapchorwa jumped into the cart. There, as in the rest of the rift, they live to jog and run to live.

And there would be no better argument for going too fast.