Lagat can really feel at home
The best runner at Bloomsday this year won’t be in the race. Moreover, he isn’t Kenyan.
We’ll pause briefly as the tectonic plates do the jitterbug.
The honored guest is a Coug – Washington State, ‘99, with two degrees, thank you – an Olympic medalist, a sportsman and gentleman. He is both victim and vindicated symbol of sport’s dreadful drug war. He is, in a way, the competitive muse of the planet’s most celebrated racer, one of the best of all-time himself and an eloquent spokesman for an Olympic movement that could use more of them – even if, at the moment, it doesn’t know what to do with him.
He is Bernard Lagat, American.
Nice ring to that.
Lagat has been invited by Bloomsday organizers to speak on Saturday and narrate video of last year’s Olympic 1,500 meters, in which he finished second to Morocco’s Hicham El Guerrouj by less than the length of a shoelace. But the inevitable Q-and-A will almost certainly center on the little cherry bomb Lagat exploded earlier this month – that he’s taken American citizenship and intends to compete for the United States rather than his native Kenya.
Except this was a decision that had little to do with competition.
The United States is where Lagat has lived full time since coming to Pullman to enroll at WSU in 1996. It’s where he met and married his wife, where his brothers and sisters have come to run and attend college and where he sees his post-running life playing out.
This isn’t a Kenyan runner changing flags for a paycheck – an issue that blew up in 2003 when Stephen Cherono defected to Qatar and won a world championship in the steeplechase as Saif Saaeed Shaheen. Other countrymen followed, and Lagat knows it’s a sensitive issue.
It was sensitive for him.
“It was anything but easy,” he said by phone from his home in Tucson, Ariz. “My father is proud man, proud to be a Kenyan. He is an elder in the village and he loves Kenya the way I do. But he understood my reasons and supports my decision.
“My heart is still there. That’s where I was born and raised and nothing is going to take that away.”
But Lagat is nothing if not realistic. He understands this is a matter of considerable give and take, most of it political. It will be consuming and it could be damaging, and yet if there’s a competitor who can run through the controversy it is Lagat – and he’s proved it.
Two years ago, on the eve of the World Championships, Lagat was forced to pull out after being told he had tested positive for erythropoietin (EPO). It was a terrible, devastating blow for a runner who has been a relentless opponent of drug cheats and artificially enhanced performance. When the “B” sample – the retest the IAAF insists upon to confirm a positive – turned up negative, Lagat’s innocence was established and his competitive status was restored.
But his reputation had been muddied.
The sports fan’s simplistic notion is that drug testing is as infallible as Santa – or St. Peter – in separating the naughty from the nice, that all the cheats will be banished and there will be no victims. But the fact is, not only do the cheats find new ways to beat the tests, but the system can be fraught with error – even incompetence.
In this case, at least, track’s backup plan worked – to a point.
“I was sick to my stomach,” he said. “It is shocking to somebody who uses drugs, but when you haven’t done anything like that, to get this news is more than a shock – it’s like you’ve been killed. It’s like you cease to exist at all. You think that if this what can happen to somebody who never uses drugs, what is the reason to continue?”
And yet Lagat found reason.
“I wanted to run again not to prove anything to anybody,” he said, “but to thank the people who stuck with me. The people who were loyal, who hugged me, who kept me in their prayers – that’s what last year was all about. The first race I was back, in Budapest, I pushed myself to the limit for those people. And for those who still doubt me, well, people will always doubt. But I cannot let them win.”
From this crucible came Lagat’s finest season as a runner. He built a respectable set of marks through the early part of the 2004 European circuit, then beat El Guerrouj in a dramatic head-to-head race in Zurich (he had also finished ahead of the Moroccan in an earlier race in Rome). Those two victories, the year’s fastest time (3 minutes, 27.40 seconds) and his near-miss in Athens – he was .12 of second from gold – earned Lagat the season’s No. 1 ranking in the event from Track and Field News, breaking El Guerrouj’s string of seven.
At the age of 30, Lagat believes he has one more Olympic run in him – Beijing in 2008. And if he’s right, he’ll be running as an American – in a race an American hasn’t won since Mel Sheppard did it in 1908, making the 1,500 our country’s Curse of the Bambino.
Of course, while the best American competitors will welcome the competition, others may not be so thrilled about our new citizen – or the records he will assume.
That’s right. At the next meeting of USA Track and Field, Lagat’s 2004 bests of 3:27.40 outdoors, 3:49.89 for the mile indoors and 3:33.34 for the 1,500 en route, will be submitted as records, and USATF records chairman Bob Hersh has said he expects them to be ratified.
This can be done because Lagat, though he just recently made the announcement, apparently became a citizen last May – which has stirred up yet another wave of controversy.
A report in the Chicago Tribune revealed that Kenya’s constitution does not allow dual citizenship, and that if a national becomes a citizen of another country, he must give up his Kenyan claim. This could confound the issue of Lagat’s eligibility to have competed for Kenya in Athens – although the Olympic Charter says only that “any competitor in the Olympic Games must be a national of the country of the (National Organizing Committee) which is entering such a competitor.”
The prospect of Lagat having to relinquish his medal hasn’t been broached by either Kenyan officials or the International Olympic Committee.
“At this point, I don’t want to talk too much about that,” Lagat said. “We will be talking with people both here and in Kenya about my citizenship in the hope that we can come to (a resolution).”
And not just his past status. The exodus of Kenyan runners to other nations led to IAAF legislation preventing athletes who change citizenship to wait three years before competing for their new countries – unless their former nations agree to shorten that term to one year. Many expect Kenya’s Ministry to take a hard line; already this month it has barred athletes who have changed citizenship from training in the country.
“I understand it’s a sensitive subject,” Lagat said. “I am hopeful they will see the reasons why I would do it – that it’s not about financial gain, that it’s something I would do if I were a runner or not. I’m still proud of everything I achieved running as a Kenyan.”
Especially the Olympic race he’ll review here on Saturday.
“It’s always interesting for me to watch,” he said with a laugh. “Sometimes, watching the tape, I feel like I might win.”