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When Luke Kibet won the world marathon championship last August, he became a favourite to achieve what no Kenyan has despite this country's distance-running brilliance - an Olympic gold medal in the 26.2-mile race.
With the Summer Games in Beijing approaching in August, though, Kibet's Olympic hopes have grown remote. He and many of Kenya's majestic runners - including dozens of Olym-pic contenders - were disrupted by the ethnic violence that followed a disputed presidential election last December and left 1,200 people dead, while several hundred thousand fled their homes.
Among those killed were Lucas Sang, a quartermiler who competed in the 1988 Summer Olympics, and Wesley Ngetich, an elite marathon runner.
On December 31, during rioting in the Rift Valley, Kibet was hit in the head with a stone and knocked unconscious. He sustained a concussion and stopped training for two weeks. In February, he pulled out a pistol to extricate himself from another potential attack.
Kibet said these events left him traumatised, unable to focus completely on his training. Then he pulled a hamstring muscle, the direct result, he believes, of interrupted training. Last month, Kibet finished a disappointing 11th at the London Marathon - seven minutes off the pace.
Workout
He has been named an alternate to the Kenyan Olympic marathon team, but his chance of competing in Beijing will now depend on another runner dropping out.
"When you see people die, it stays in your mind," Kibet, 25, said here at his home.
The workout regimens of many of Kenya's elite runners were disrupted in January and February.
Some runners received death threats. Many remained indoors for a week or more, afraid to leave their homes, while others left the country to train in more hospitable environments.
Meanwhile, the reputation of the country's runners as peaceful ambassadors also sustained a blow. An international monitoring agency reported in February that some Kenyan runners, many of whom have military backgrounds, may have participated in the violence, as well as lending financial aid and transportation assistance to tribal militias.
The chaos has since abated. In mid-April, the government formed a national unity Cabinet. Yet it is too soon to know whether the ethnic strife and training disruptions will affect Kenya's medal chances at the Beijing Olympics. Kenya won no gold medals, and only a pair of bronzes, at the world indoor track championships in March, while its distance-running rival, Ethiopia, won three golds and six medals overall. Ethiopia also swept all four individual races at the world cross-country championships in March.
While Kenya won team titles in the men's senior and junior divisions, it failed to win an individual event for the first time in more than 20 years.
The news has been far more encouraging on the marathon front.
While Kibet has struggled, his fellow Kenyans won the top three international spring marathons in Boston, London and Rotterdam.
And David Rudisha, a teenage sensation, ran the world's fastest time of the year - 1 minute 44.20 seconds - in winning the 800 metres at the African championships this month in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
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