Age is Just a Number...for Kenyan Juniors

It's natural when you hear about the athletic feats of an 18 year old or a 19 year old to begin to daydream and consider the enormous potential of someone so young running so fast or throwing and jumping so far. After all, we associate athletes that young with incomplete development in terms of their physical makeup, their training load, and even their mentality. So, when you hear about a new junior record at a certain distance, the natural first reaction is not to think about the actual performance as it relates to the best of athletes of all ages. Instead, we tend to look at whom the athletes were more accomplished than at their age, and how much better they may become with greater maturity and seasoning.

I bring this all up because just a little time ago, Isaiah Koech (pictured above), ran a world leading and #4 AT 12:53 indoor 5,000 with an IAAF listed birth date of December 13, 1993. If this age is to be believed, the neophyte Koech is barely a remarkable 17 years of age. For any athlete, the result itself is incredible considering the company Koech now keeps. The only men faster are three legends of the sport in Kenenisa Bekele (the #1 distance runner of all time), Haile Gebresalassie (a close #2), and Daniel Komen (the greatest 3000-2mile runner of all time).

Now, it's clear from this result that Koech is already there- he's there in the sense that he is already a contender for a 5,000 medal in an incredibly competitive era for the 5,000. Beating a perennial contender in Eliud Kipchoge and running a 12:53 indoors, even on a great 200m banked track, indicates that Koech's form right now is good enough to get him on the podium. What isn't clear is how much stock we should put into Koech's supposed age. We'd all like to assume that there is tons of development for any youngster even if his age is not exactly right. In America, the best time anyone puts up as a college freshman or sophomore is never immediately looked upon as close to his/her limits. We associate a host of factors as potential drivers for new personal bests and breakthroughs in the coming years. However, if we compare Kenyan juniors to American juniors, we are making the classic mistake of comparing apples to oranges.

So, I think the best way to look at this is to look at some of Koech's compatriots' experience after running superior marks as juniors or very young athletes. Here is a sampling of what I've found from Kenyan athletes in the the world junior top 10 AT list of the 1500 and the 5000 and their best marks in the three years after:

Age/Performance Next 3 years best perf.
Eliud Kipchoge 18 years old 12:52.79 WC Gold (53 last lap) 12:46/12:54/12:50
Cornelius Chirchir 19 years old 3:30.24 3:31/3:30/3:40
Augustine Choge 17 years old 12:57 12:53/12:56/3:31
Philip Mosima 19 years old 12:53 13:13/13:29/13:12
Sammy Kipketer 18 years old 12:58 12:54/12:59/12:56
James Kwalia 19 years old 12:54 7:28.2/13:21/13:29
Alex Kipchirchir 17 years old 3:32.95 3:31/3:30/3:31
Isaac Songok 19 years old 3:31.54 3:30.9/3:31.7-12:52/3:31.8-12:48
Asbel Kiprop 19 years old 3:31.64 (OG Gold) 3:31.20/3:31.78

As you can see most athletes improve marginally if at all after their breakthrough performance as juniors. The reasons for this could be a host of things.

For one, cynics will point out that the Kenyan authorities frequently make up ages and that age fraud is rampant. What is undeniable (from testimonial of coaches like Renato Canova) is that for many Kenyan children in rural upbringings their exact birthday is unknown to them. This could be a major factor if these athletes are really more like 22 years old and closer to their physical peaks.

Another explanations is that unlike American 19 year olds, for example, many of these Kenyans are active from a young age and aerobically stronger when they begin serious training. After a year of successful junior competitions and hard training, they are capable of jumping immediately into elite training and competing against the world's best senior competition. There is such a high level of competitiveness to make teams and to attain spots in races overseas, that it's unlikely that younger athletes would worry as much as American youngsters do about their long-term development and the extreme difficulty of their training. Thus, they are more likely to achieve world-class marks at an earlier age and approach their potential and even lower their ceiling as they do so.

One last explanation is a "complacency" thesis that asserts that once these Kenyan athletes, often from very poor upbringings, achieve a certain level of fame and financial reward, their motivation wanes. In Kenya, the money that can be attained as a world class runner often goes a long way. An athlete like Alex Kipchirchir could be looked at as a "wasted talent" considering how good he was at such a young age and how little his personal bests changed. However, Kipchirchir is a Commonwealth and African Games gold medalist (think fame/acclaim) as well as winner of various major meets, the IAAF World Cup, and the IAAF World Athletics Final (think $$$). Running for many Kenyans could very well be a means to make a fortune and set one's family up for the future as opposed to a chance to test one's limits before the start of another career, as it is for many Americans.

One last point on this is that I believe the statistics point to a single factor being more important than age in gauging and forecasting the Kenyans with the most promising futures. That is their exposure (or lack thereof) to senior-level competition and the fastest races in the world. Kenyans' breakthroughs seem to occur most frequently, as Koech's did, in their first race with a top 5 athlete in the world. Age might just be a number for Kenyans, but an athlete's finishing place certainly is not.