Kenya’s one shoe wonders: They are better remembered for the missing shoe or rather competing shoeless

Moses Tanui after winning silver medal in Stuttgart in 1993. [IAAF]

Kenyan athletes require no prop to stand tall in the sports arena as they have always produced brilliant shows in global competitions.

Since Kenya made her debut in international competitions at the 1954 Commonwealth Games in Vancouver, Canada where Nyandika Maiyoro finished fourth in the three-mile event while competing barefoot, one distinctive point has stand out – there have been a growing list of Kenyans staging spectacular shows while competing with one shoe.

There have been numerous examples of athletes losing shoes on track and road races. But the one in which World and Olympic 3000m steeplechase champion Conseslus Kipruto faced a tougher circumstance at the 2018 IAAF Diamond League meeting in Zurich on August 30 was wonderful.

His left shoe was sent flying by an opponent’s foot and had to content with the high pace to bag the IAAF Diamond League Trophy title.

“I have big pain,” Kipruto said after finishing a stride ahead in 8:10.15. “I am injured because I lost my left shoe. That was a mess. But it motivated me to fight as hard as I could, so the race went well.”

Eliud Kipchoge, who set a new world record of 2:01.39 a fort night ago in Berlin Marathon, offers another fairytale. The three-time Berlin and London marathons winner had to put up with faulty shoes for a far longer period when his insoles started flapping out halfway through the 2015 Berlin Marathon. And he still went on to win the race.

At last year’s IAAF Diamond League meeting in Eugene, 18-year-old Celliphine Chespol, produced an extraordinary piece of running as, despite losing one of her shoes on the penultimate water jump, she pressed on to finish second in 8:58.78, a World Under 20 record which makes her the third fastest runner of all time.

Kenya's Conseslus Kipruto competes without a shoe in the men's 3000m steeplechase race during the Weltklasse IAAF Diamond League international athletics meeting in the Letzigrund stadium in Zurich, Switzerland, Thursday, August 30, 2018. (Ennio Leanza/Keystone via AP)

But turn the clock to 1993 IAAF World Athletics Championships in Stuttgart, Germany, when a footwear malfunction occurred in the final lap of men’s 10,000m. Ethiopia’s Haile Gebrselassie clipped Moses Tanui’s heels in the final lap.

Tanui, who was then the defending world champion, waved his arms and then flung off his partially dislodged left shoe and made an immediate effort to sprint past Gebrselassie. He could not beat the Ethiopian.

“I could not grab the last lap the way I wanted. If I had my shoes, he would not beat me.”

“Now it’s 25 years ago, but I still treat the silver medal I won as gold. I was in top form and I was sure to beat Gebrselassie. The federation did not file an appeal. I felt bad,” Tanui said yesterday.

The Stuttgart Championships included two other shoe-related incidents. In men’s 400m final, Olympic champion Quincy Watts of the United States had his shoes effectively disintegrated during the race.

Christoper Kosgei’s victory in 3,000m steeplechase in Seville, Spain in 1999 while running barefoot remains another talking point.

Kosgei, popularly known as Jogoo, for his one-finger salute trademark at the finish line comes from a family with a 3,000m steeplechase pedigree.

He is the elder brother of Kenyan-born-turned Qatari Saif Said Shaheen (formerly Stephen Cherono) and former Commonwealth Games 3,000m steeplechase silver medalist Abraham Cherono.

Shaheen is the world 3,000m steeplechase record holder at 7:53.63 set in Brussels in 2004.

While all athletes tightened spikes laces before the race, Kosgei was busy wrapping his toes with an insulating tape to avoid injuries especially in the barriers and the water jump. He was known to carry insulating tapes to competitions abroad.

After the World Championships in Seville in 1999, Kosgei returned home with the gold and silver (from the 1995 edition in Gothenburg) hanging on his neck. He staged a big party at home that inspired his younger brothers to take up the water and barriers race.

The insoles of Kenya's Eliud Kipchoge's running shoes are seen slipping up to his ankles, after he crosses the finish line to win the men's 42nd Berlin marathon, in Berlin, Germany September 27, 2015. Kenyan favourite Kipchoge shrugged off mid-race footwear problems to win the Berlin marathon on Sunday with a personal best time of two hours, four minutes and one second but missed out on a world record by more than a minute. REUTERS

Ethiopia’s Etenesh Diro had one of her shoes clipped in a tangle with another runner as she ran in the pack with a couple of laps to go in her steeplechase heat at the 2016 Olympics in Rio.

The Ethiopian caused something of a pile up as she knelt on the track and attempted to replace it, unsuccessfully, before discarding both it and her sock and finishing the race with one bare foot.

Diro finished outside the qualifying places, but was allowed to progress following an appeal.

But the most famous Olympic example of barefoot running occurred back at the 1960 Rome Games, where another Ethiopian – Abebe Bikila – arrived as a late replacement to run the marathon and found that the shoes issued to him by the team did not fit comfortably.

He ran barefoot and set a world record in what would be the first of two historic Olympic marathon victories for him – albeit that by the time of the second, at the 1964 Tokyo Games, he had a pair of shoes he found comfortable. America’s Jenny Simpson lost shoe in the 2015 World Championships.

Additional reporting by iaaf.org