Tegla Loroupe

1973–

Athlete

Tegla Loroupe of Kenya emerged as one of the world's top long-distance runners in 1994 when she became the first African woman ever to win the New York City Marathon. She went on to shatter the women's world record for the 26-mile run a few years later in another marathon, but was sidelined by illness at the 2000 Olympics and then by a persistent back injury. A celebrity in her homeland, the diminutive Loroupe has become a peace activist and United Nations goodwill ambassador.

Loroupe was born in the maize field where her mother was working on a May day in 1973 near Kapsait, a village in northwestern Kenya. During Loroupe's childhood, homes in Kapsait had no electricity or running water, and any trips elsewhere were usually undertaken on foot, as they had been for centuries. Loroupe's family belonged to the Pokot ethnic group, and worked as cattle herders and farmers like many of the western branch of the Pokot. The group also practiced polygamy; her mother was the first of her father's four wives, and Loroupe one of his 24 children. Such a lifestyle meant that Pokot women were expected to spend their lives close to home: first as a caretaker for their younger siblings, and later as wives and mothers themselves. Loroupe started bearing these burdens at three years old, when she was given responsibility for her looking after her aunt's children. "It is difficult for me to believe how strong I am," Loroupe told New York Times writer Jere Longman many years later. "I worked so hard when I was young. Running is just a minor thing to me, compared with what I was doing with my family. I carried a lot of water and firewood. I had a lot of strain on my shoulders."

Ordered to Compete for School

Loroupe's stubborn streak and independence was evident at an early age, and her family nicknamed her Chametia, or "one who never gets annoyed." She entered school with her brothers over her father objections, and usually ran the ten-kilometer distance every morning in bare feet. She had to run because there were so many chores to complete before she could leave for school, and teachers were permitted to beat a student for being late. The terrain Loroupe crossed to reach school was quite challenging: the northwestern part of Kenya where she lived was hilly, and at an elevation of 9,000 feet, which meant that oxygen was scarcer and the heart and lungs had to work harder. "You cry at first," Loroupe recalled about the trek in an interview with Merrell Noden in Sports Illustrated. "After a time, you get used to it."

At the age of nine, Loroupe became the surprise winner of three races in her school's annual sports day. She continued to race and often beat the fastest of the local boys, but her father thought that athletic pursuits were inappropriate for a female. He offered her a deal: she would be allowed to enroll in a boarding school if she agreed to stop running for good. She complied, but then another student at her new school told the teachers that Loroupe was a talented athlete, and they, too, came to her with an offer: either she would run in competitions for the school, or she could circle the dirt track on her knees. She chose to compete, and eventually emerged as the Kenyan national high-school champion.

After completing a college-level accounting course, Loroupe worked for the Kenyan postal service as an auditor, and her employer eventually became her sponsor. Hoping to run professionally, she had a difficult time finding a top-notch coach in Kenya who would agree to train a woman, and the national athletic federation was also indifferent to her talent. In the early 1990s she decided to move to Germany, where she first joined a community of fellow Africans who were training with a German coach. There, she had to train by herself, and was expected to cook and clean for the men. In time she found a more sympathetic coach, Volker Wagner, and his German training site would eventually take on several more top-notch women runners from Africa.

Won New York City Marathon

Loroupe had won distance races even as a 14-year-old, and began training to compete in marathons. She entered the New York City Marathon in 1994 for the first time, and sailed across the finish line as the first woman finisher that year and the first African woman ever to come in first. Her rewards included $37,500, a new Mercedes, and immense fame back in Kenya. The money made her immensely wealthy by the standards of the average Kenyan, and certainly more so for a woman. She purchased a farm near her family, but violent crime had increased in the area and she was occasionally threatened, prompting her return to Germany on a more permanent basis.

In 1995 Loroupe again won the women's title in the New York City Marathon, despite having suffered a personal tragedy less than a month before when her sister Albina had died of uncontrolled internal bleeding; the nearest hospital was simply too far to get to in time. Loroupe, however, remained focused and continued her winning streak for the next five years. She won the Rotterdam Marathon in the Netherlands three times, and in her second victory in that event she set the new women's world record with a time of 2:20:47. Her 1998 win shattered the previous women's world record for the marathon by an astonishing 19 seconds, and also became the first Kenyan of either gender to set a new world record in the event. She went on to win the 10,000-meter in the Goodwill Games that same year, and set another world record for a one-hour run with a distance of 11 miles and 696 yards.

In the 1999 Berlin Marathon, Loroupe broke her own previous world record by four seconds. During the 2000 Summer Olympic Games in Sydney, Australia, her chance to win a gold medal was stymied by a case of food poisoning; she completed the marathon anyway and finished in thirteenth place. In 2000, she won both the London and Rome marathons, but began to suffer from back troubles that forced her to cut back on her training. Once she returned to competition, she was unable to regain her dominance in the sport.

Established Foundation to Aid Kenyans

Loroupe decided to spend more time in Kenya and work toward solving some of the problems plaguing the country. In the area where she grew up, cattle poaching had long been a common occurrence, but some thieves now brandished automatic weapons. Concerned about the rise of violence in her native Kenya—as well as the larger continent's longstanding troubles—in 2003 she established the Tegla Loroupe Peace Foundation. It funds conflict-resolution programs and sponsors "Peace Through Sports" marathons, which are relays in which teams of government leaders, officials, diplomats, and ordinary citizens run through troubled areas of Kenya, Uganda, and Sudan. Loroupe also established a school and orphanage in Kapenguria, where she had attended boarding school. In 2006, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan named her one of several new United Nations Ambassadors of Sport.

Loroupe has remarked in interviews that her father's attitudes eventually changed with the times, and he showed pride in her achievements. "He said it was better that I was very hardheaded," she reported to Longman, the New York Times sportswriter, in 1998. "He could have spoiled my talent. Now he's glad I didn't listen to him."

At a Glance …

Born on May 9, 1973, in Kapsait, Kenya; daughter of Loroupe Losiwa and Mary Lotuma.

Career: Set Kenyan national records in the 3000-meter, 5000-meter and 10,000-meter; won bronze medal at the 1993 World Half-Marathon Championships; women's first-place finisher in the New York City Marathon, 1994, 1995, in the 1997, 1998 and 1999 Rotterdam Marathons; also won the women's title in the Berlin Marathon, 1999 and London and Rome marathons of 2000. Established the Tegla Loroupe Peace Foundation, 2003.

Addresses: Office—Tegla Loroupe Peace Foundation, P.O. Box 67754-00200, Nairobi, Kenya. Web—www.teglaloroupepeacefoundation.org.

Sources

Periodicals

Essence, September 1999, p. 78.

New York Times, October 27, 1998, p. G1; August 13, 2000, p. B1; November 18, 2006, p. A4.

Runner's World, July 1998, p. 76.

Sports Illustrated, November 2, 1998, p. R12.

Bill Rodgers 1947–, American distance runner, b. Hartford, Conn. He helped to popularize distance running in the U.S. He won the Boston Marathon and the New York City Marathon four times each between 1975 and 1980.