Boniface Kiprop of Uganda celebrates his 10,000m final (© Getty Images)
Like many runners, the idol of Boniface Kiprop is the Ethiopian legend Haile Gebrselassie and the Ugandan teenager went a little way to following in the footsteps of the man popularly known as The Emperor by winning the IAAF World Junior Championships 10,000m title.
Gebrselassie had won the gold medal in the same event in 1992 and held the Championship record until Kiprop clocked 28:03.77 in Grosseto to shave 22-hundredths of a second off the former best.
“Haile is the tops and so I want to be like him. It is an honour to break one of his records because everybody knows what sort of runner he is,” said Kiprop modestly after his triumph.
Kiprop’s new Championship record could have been faster still but for some idiosyncratic tactics, which ensured victory but slowed his winning time.
“I wanted someone to help with the pace in the early stages of the race but no one would. A Kenyan runner was behind me and kept treading on my heels, I asked him to go in front but he wouldn’t so I decided just to increase the pace.”
“Later in the race, I could see Fabiano (Tanzania’s Fabiano Joseph) was trying to get back to me and so I let him catch up with me with two laps to go.”
“I know Fabiano well and so I knew I was faster than him over the last lap,” reflected the articulate Kiprop, whose ability to express himself in interviews as well as on the track defies the tongue-tied stereotype of other runners from the region.
Kiprop showed supreme confidence in Grosseto but it wasn’t always the case.
“When I first went to my first big competition (the 2000 World Cross Country Championships as a mere 14 year-old where he finished 27th), everything was so new to me and I was still young but our junior team got the bronze medal and that experience showed me what I had to do.”
“OK, I then got a bronze medal at the 2002 World Cross but that was still a big surprise for me. However, since then I have more confidence in myself.”
Now the Olympics are on the horizon, and Kiprop is going to contest the 10,000m once more.
“I am going to the Olympics with the idea of getting a medal. It will be tough, especially with the Ethiopians. As for the Kenyans, I don’t fear them so much, they are dropping back, the Ethiopians are the runners I will be watching. And this year, I want to run under 27 minutes, I know that is possible.”
A medal may be a tall order with the likes of Bekele, Sihine and Gebrselassie set to represent Ethiopia, but his second ambition should be well within his grasp before the end of the season.
Kiprop can boast of a Ugandan record of 27:15.88 over 25 laps of the track, which he ran in Brussels last September and even if he doesn’t break the 27 minute-barrier then the World junior record of 27:11.18, set by Kenya’s late Richard Chelimo in 1991, could be consigned to history this summer.
Phil Minshull for the IAAF
