Athletics World Championships 19.8.–27.8. Ylen channels. See the schedule and broadcast information of the games at this link.
BUDAPEST. Gold at the African Youth Championships 2.–3. May 2023. Adult silver at the Kenyan championships on June 24. A place on the Budapest race machine with Kenya’s victory in the WC qualifiers on July 8.
All this in nine weeks at the age of 19.
Kenyan endurance runner Peninah Muthoni Mutisya is an athlete still unknown to the general public. And for a reason.
There is no information available on the internet about the background of Mutisya, who competes in the 800 meters. Even the Tilastopaja service, known as a hotbed of athletics data, does not offer anything more far-reaching about his development than the May African Youth Championships already mentioned at the beginning.
Mutisya has appeared in the world in the adult games only twice at the end of July. In his debut, he ran to victory in Lucerne, Switzerland with a time of 1:58.76. It is 0.65 seconds harder than Sara Lappalainen 800 meter Finnish record.
With Mutisya set to make his World Cup debut in Budapest on Wednesday, it’s only fitting that we try to find out what kind of endurance running talent he is.
Join the success stories
Kenya is one of the few countries where athletics is not only the country’s most popular but also an ever-growing sport. One factor that explains the growth is success: Kenya is one of the top countries in athletics from one prestigious competition to another.
The spike was seen at the 2015 World Championships in Beijing, where Kenya won the medal tally sensationally.
The Kenyan flag also flew in the highest Salo most often in the under-20 World Cup in 2018 and 2021.
However, the women’s 800m has been a distance that Kenyans have not won at the adult Olympic and World Championship level since 2013.
Could Mutisya be the pipe breaker already in Budapest?
– I don’t think his breakthrough will happen here yet. He is still so young, working as the head of the youth development program at the Kenyan Athletics Association, and in the early 1990s he was one of the country’s top runners at 5,000 meters Barnabas Korir assessed on Monday in an interview with Urheilu.
Urheilu asked the Kenyan Federation for an interview with Mutisya, but received a negative answer. In Mutisya’s case, there is no advance press either. The cultural difference to Finland is huge.
The Finnish Sports Federation always organizes daily press conferences at prestigious competitions, where journalists can interview Finnish athletes who appear in the competitions. In addition, SUL distributes to journalists a competition guide made for the Finnish team, which shows not only the results of each Finnish athlete’s season, but also other useful information.
In the Kenyan association, an interview related to Mutisya turns out to be almost impossible, even with the mouth of the coach or the team management.
After a long persuasion, Korir finally agrees to talk about Mutisya, but says almost in a handshake that he doesn’t know the athlete. Knowledge of its own, too.
– I know that he went to school in Machakos (south-east of Nairobi) and that he was a conscientious student.
– I saw him run for the first time in front of my eyes at the Kenyan championships (June 22-24, 2023). When he stayed to Mary Mora (reigning World Cup bronze medallist) riding and taking silver, his potential dawned on me, says Korir.
System development underway
It is natural that Mutisya’s rocket-like rise has not caused any major tremors in Kenya so far.
In a running country like Kenya, international level runners are a gray mass, with the exception of a few exceptional individuals.
For example, out of the top six athletes in the world statistics for the marathon this season, five athletes come from Kenya. 96 Kenyans have weighed less than half this year alone by Janne Holmén SE time 2.10.46.
Korir describes his country’s endurance running system as a pyramid, with village activities at the bottom, then district, provincial and finally the national top.
The activity is organized only at the top of the pyramid.
Institutions such as the police and the army also maintain organized activities from which the union can draw talent. Thousands of talented runners are still left out of the system.
– The Kenyan federation is currently developing a tracking system that would help us stay on the map of our track and field athletes. It’s challenging because we don’t have the same social structure as you, says Korir.
Korir’s words become flesh when looking at the cold data.
If Finland, with a population of 5.6 million, has organized 161 World Athletics-approved competitions since January, there have been six WA games in Kenya, with a population of 56 million.
To run the statistical workshop service Mirko Jalavan according to Kenya, statistical data arrived normally until last year, until WA implemented a system in which it accepts results only in the competitions it certifies. Before the change, there were results from about a hundred races held in Kenya per year.
In reality, the number of athletics competitions organized in Kenya is many times higher than in Finland. Deficiencies in statistics and entering results into digital systems are also present elsewhere in Africa.
– Peninah Mutisya’s first competition this year was naturally not the African Youth Championships in Zambia. In March, he won the youth East African championship in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The time was probably 2:06, says Korir and remembers that the time was the same level as Mutisya’s previous season’s record.
In other words, the runner’s promise has shaved about eight seconds off his record during the year.
The improvement may raise awkward questions in the minds of many, especially considering the prevalence of Kenyan endurance runners in doping-related news.
More than a hundred Kenyans have received doping convictions since 2017, which is why Kenya is classified by the International Association of Athletics Federations as a category A country, i.e. a country with a high doping risk.
– The doping cases have damaged our reputation, there is no doubt about that. But the training mentality of Kenyans is unique. Our runners have grown up in a tough environment, which has hardened them mentally. That feature cannot be duplicated. And above all, they love running, says Korir.
However, Korir agrees that transparency increases trust in the system.
– When our monitoring system is completed, more information will be available in the future, Korir promises.
However, Mutisya will remain a kind of mystery, at least at the end of the interview on Monday.
On Tuesday, he was completely eliminated from the starting lists of the 800 meter heats on Wednesday.