'High' hopes for Kenya's women runners

High in the mountains of Kenya, the nation's women runners are taking control of their own lives.

"Our experience as women athletes has not been good," said twice Los Angeles marathon champion Lorna Kiplagat, as she marked the first anniversary of the women's training centre she created.

"When we compare notes, we find that we have all gone through harrowing experiences and this must change for the better," Kiplagat, 27, said.

"By building this camp for women and a few boys, I am just saving our girls from the experience we went through," Kiplagat added.

Kiplagat declined to go into details but Kenyan athletics chiefs have recently spoken out against coaches who they said subjected young girls to sexual harassment in training camps and said they were seriously thinking of setting up a women-only camp.

Kiplagat marked the anniversary of the high-altitude athletics training centre that she and her Dutch husband Pieter Langerhorst set up in Iten, 30 kms north of Eldoret, by hosting a 10-km road race on Friday which was attended by a galaxy of women marathon runners.

CHEERING CROWD

The race was won by former world cross country championships silver medallist Jane Ekimat.

Among those present were Wincatherine Ndereba, who has run the world's fastest women's marathon, Rotterdam champion Susan Chepkemei and Joyce Chepchumba, twice winner of the London marathon.

Ndereba, twice winner of the Boston and Chicago marathons, did not run. But in a speech to the cheering crowd she urged women athletes to discard the 'weaker sex' image and take the initiative to dominate the world of athletics just as their Kenyan male counterparts have done.

"I don't agree with the assertion that we don't do well at a senior level because of domestic demands like marriage or child bearing," said Ndereba, herself the mother of a six-year-old girl.

Chepchumba said women athletes had to "pull up our socks and take our rightful place in athletics development".

"Don't sit back and hope that things will be done for you. We are achievers in our own right and we must lead from the front," Chepchumba said.

WOMEN'S DREAM

Patrick Sang, winner of the Olympics 3,000 metres steeplechase silver medal in Barcelona in 1992, likened the renaissance of Kenyan women's athletics to civil rights leader Martin Luther King's dream.

"Like Martin Luther King Junior, our women athletes had a dream which they are beginning to realise today," he said paying tribute to Kenya's successful women of the past, including Sabina Chebichi and Tecla Chemabwai.

Chebichi was the first Kenyan woman to win a medal at the Commonwealth Games, taking bronze in the 800 metres in 1974.

Chemabwai won a 400 metres gold at the All-Africa Games in 1973.

"Today we have (former world marathon best holder) Tegla Loroupe, Catherine Ndereba, Susan Chepkemei and Joyce Chepchumba," he said.

Kiplagat's camp, which cost $200,000 to build and was funded partly by her own career earnings, looks after 40 athletes on its site 2,400 metres above sea level in the mountainous terrain of Keiyo.

It is already producing success stories. One of its athletes, the 19-year-old Jane Kiptoo, ran the second fastest 3,000 metres last year with 8:45 and won a silver medal over the distance at the world junior championships in Santiago, Chile.