Ian O’Riordan: Daniel Komen was always one to watch out for

One of my colleagues in this business keeps telling me how much he used to love watching athletics on TV. He doesn’t actually watch anything else these days except the Dublin footballers, although there was a time, not long ago, when he wouldn’t dare miss it. Especially one particular athlete.

“Daniel Komen,” he says. “Remember him? Daniel Komen was unbelievable to watch, constantly breaking world records. But it’s just not worth watching anymore. Plus all the Kenyans now look the same.”

He’s not entirely wrong about that. There was something distinctly thrilling about Komen running around the track, and some of the world records he broke during that time still stand. The only shame is that his career didn’t run a little longer, and in certain ways perhaps athletics on TV will never see his likes again.

Indeed I’ll never forget one summer evening in 1996, sitting in front of the portable TV in the kitchen, watching Komen run 7:20.67 for 3,000 metres, in Rieti. Tim Hutchings and Steve Cram were just starting out as Eurosport commentators, and actually laughed out loud when the pacemaker took Komen through the first 800m in 1:57.0. “Absolutely suicidal,” says Hutchings, or words to that effect. Only instead of dying, Komen – aged only 20 – kept going, knocking an incredible five second chunk off the world record. No athlete has come within a lick of Komen’s time in the 19 years since.

The magnificence

Or, the following summer, in front of the same portable TV, watching Komen run 7:58.61 for two miles, in Hechtel. No other athlete, before or indeed since, has run two sub-four minute miles back-to-back like that. As if to underline the magnificence of his feat, Komen ran his first mile in 3:59.21, faster than Roger Bannister ran when becoming the first man to run sub-four. Komen then followed that with a second mile in 3:59.40 – exactly what Banninster had run, in 1954.

Komen made numerous other world record attempts in that two-year period, and if he didn’t break them he came damn close: in 1997, he knocked two seconds off the 5,000m world record held by Haile Gebrselassie, running 12:39.74, in Brussels – the first ever sub 12:40. Now, some people point the finger at those times and suspect Komen was doping, and there’s no doubt EPO was rife during that era. Others, who trained or raced against him, say no way, that Komen was clean, just one of those rare freaks of nature who occasionally come along to rewrite the record books. Only then, almost as quick as he arrived, he was gone.

There were already plenty of Kenyan athletes on TV when Komen first appeared, in the summer of 1995, seemingly and quite literally out of nowhere. Although what helped set Komen apart was his fearless naivety when it came to world records. In one of his first TV appearances, in Rome in 1995, he very nearly beat another Kenyan, Moses Kiptanui, over 5,000m, the man he was supposed to be pacing.

Exceptional talent

Kiptanui needed to run a world record of 12:55.30 to win, Komen running a world junior record of 12:56.15 in second. This exceptional talent had only been spotted earlier that season, on one of his first trips outside of Kenya, when Komen won the 5,000/10,000m double at the World Juniors in Lisbon. With that he was immediately signed up by the late Kim McDonald, and based himself in Teddington, London, with a band of equally prolific athletes, including our own Sonia O’Sullivan.

The only tactic he knew was front-running. This cost him a place on the Kenyan team for the Atlanta Olympics, in 1996, when he was beaten into fourth place at their trails, although this cleared the way for his summer of world record attempts. In Monaco, not long after watching those Olympics on TV himself, Komen ran 7:25.16 for 3,000m, just, .05 shy of the world record, although he admitted afterwards that he’d no idea what the world record actually was.

He also told McDonald not to bother with specific splits or lap times when it came to world record attempts: “Just tell me faster or slower as I go by,” he’d say instead, and that usually worked just fine.

Still, Komen’s only medal glory came at the 1997 World Championships in Athens, when winning the 5,000m, because by the time the Sydney Olympics rolled around, in 2000, Komen had apparently lost interest. This, it seems, is what also set him apart. He’d come from one of the poorest parts of Kenya’s Rift Valley, one of 14 children, living in a small hut, outside of which his mother sold potatoes.

Komen’s running was never much more than a way of lifting himself out of that poverty, and once he’d earned enough money to buy a house, that was good enough. His motivation plummeted in direct proportion to his weight gain, and when he failed to make the Sydney Olympics, he effectively quit.

These days, Komen is back living in Kenya, in the business of running a school with his wife, Joyce. He may or may not still watch athletics on TV, although had he tuned in for the Paris Diamond League last Saturday, he could only have been impressed. There, running in the 3,000m steeplechase, the event dominated by the Kenyans more than any other, was a moment of fearless naivety reminiscent of Komen.

TV moment

Only he certainly couldn’t be accused of looking the same as all the Kenyans, because Evan Jager is an American, and by taking on the Kenyans in their own event, he may well have provided the athletics TV moment of the year. And even if Jager didn’t actually win, no one can say this one particular athlete isn’t worth watching.

See it here – youtube.com/watch?v=BedQqe7NvCk