Ondieki, Yobes

▪ 1994

      Yobes Ondieki had not run 10,000 m on a track for 10 years when he started training for the event in February 1993. The reigning world champion at 5,000 m, he set his sights for the Bislett Games Grand Prix 10,000-m race on July 10 at Oslo, Norway, on a track where dozens of records had fallen. He prepared with three months of altitude training and three 5,000-m races through mid-June, and then he ran the 10,000 as if it were just two 5,000s.

      Ondieki asked the pacesetters to run the first 5,000 m between 13 min 25 sec and 13 min 30 sec, a speed that onlookers said would leave him too weary for a strong finish. However, after a 5,000-m time of 13 min 28 sec, Ondieki led for the last third of the race and finished in 26 min 58.38 sec, shattering the 27-minute barrier that was expected to stand into the next century and shaving 9.53 seconds off a world record that had fallen by only 24 seconds during the previous 15 years.

      Coming five days after fellow Kenyan Richard Chelimo had broken a four-year-old world record, Ondieki's mark made 1993 the first year since 1956 in which the 10,000-m record had been broken twice in one season. According to two widely respected comparison tables, Ondieki's was the greatest distance race ever run, from 1,500 m through the marathon.

      Ondieki was born Feb. 21, 1961, in Kenya. He attended Iowa State University and afterward trained mostly in the United States. After years of injuries and bad luck, he became a world-class runner in 1988, when he finished 12th in the 5,000 m at the Olympic Games. He became a champion the next year, when he was the first man in 10 years to beat Said Aouita of Morocco at 5,000 m. He ran the world's best 5,000 times in 1989 and 1991, and his 1991 time, a personal record of 13 min 1.82 sec, was the sixth best ever. He won the 5,000 m at the 1991 world outdoor championships in Tokyo, but he finished a disappointing fifth at the distance in the 1992 Olympics at Barcelona, Spain, which took place shortly after he developed sciatica.

      His strained relationship with Kenyan track and field authorities surfaced when he did not run in his country's 1993 national trials and refused to defend his 5,000-m world championship at Stuttgart, Germany, in August. He said he planned to continue running at both 5,000-m and 10,000-m distances, but he also added another goal: he planned to run his first marathon. (KEVIN M. LAMB)

* * *