Kenya’s Kirwa Konsecha shows that he’s a true Masai warrior

Lille, France – Leonard Kirwa Konsecha was not even the best Kenyan youth 800m runner a month ago after he finished third at the Kenya Colleges and Schools Triangular Championships, which acted as a trials for the IAAF World Youth Championships, but he showed what determination and a few weeks of dedicated training can do.

At the IAAF World Youth Championships in Lille, he blasted his way to a World Youth best of 1:44.08 to leave the former mark of 1:44.34, which had belonged to Bahrain’s Belal Mansoor Ali since 2005, to be erased from the record books.

“He had been practising to do that sort of performance during the three weeks of training camp in the Ngong Hills we have had between the end of our own Championships and starting here,” said the Kenyan team head coach Gekonyo Kariuki.

“He’s been doing repetitions going through 200m in 24.5 second and then 400s in around 50 seconds. We planned to go through the first 400 in between 50 and 51 seconds because we knew that if they went through in 54 seconds it was anybody’s race but we knew this young boy has a good finish and could probably stay strong on the second lap.”

Kirwa Konsencha, who hails from the Masai district of Narok and close to where the senior World record holder David Rudisha lives, clearly remembered what he had done in the training camp near Nairobi as he blasted through 200m in a staggering 24.60 before taking the bell in 50.85.

He then just kept poring on the pace over the second circuit, despite close attendance by Ethiopia’s eventual silver medallist Mohammed Aman, until finally putting his Rift Valley rival to the sword down the home straight.

Konsecha Kirwa’s splits would have done a race in the Samsung Diamond League proud, and he moved up to fifth place on the 2011 world rankings which are lead by his near neighbour, but the times became jaw dropping as spectators in the Lille Métropole stadium remembered that the young man in front of them was just 16.

“The hidden factor in this race was that our 400m hurdler Ken Kirui Tele is a good friend of Konsecha’s and they have rooms side-by-side where we are staying. In fact, they are the only ones from our team on that particular floor of the hotel.

“I am sure they were saying to each other last night ‘I will do better than you. No, I will do better than you.’ They are Masai, they are Moran [warriors], and that is the way of the Masai, to challenge each other like that.”

“Kirwa Konsecha will have said to himself ‘I can’t go home without at least a medal, I cannot let myself be defeated’ after seeing Tele had finished fourth just a few minutes before he went to his marks,” added Gekonyo Kariouki

The quietly spoken Kirwa Konsecha was a man of few words in Lille and the media struggled to get a longer sentence than the comment of “I am very happy.”