Running for Black Gold - Book Review

When Africa's best will be competing at the Olympics showpiece in a week's time, they shall be looking for inspiration and hoping to be the same pedigree that has gone before them. This pedigree has been captured in a new book titled - Running for Black Gold - by Kevin Lillis ( and Photography by Mark Shearman).

This 170- pager seeks to record the history of African athletes at the Olympic Games as organised by IOC and the World Athletics Championships (held under IAAF). The author worked in many African countries and thus been able to document the achievements of African athletes. This is from the 1960 when Ethiopia's Abebe Bikila won Africa her first Gold medal to the last Olympic Games in Beijing and the World Athletics championships in Daegu, South Korea.

" After Abebe Bikila's Olympic marathon gold medals in world record times in both Rome (1960) and Tokyo (1964), African athletes began to assume greater prominence. At the Tokyo Olympic Games in 1964, Africa claimed two medals in addition to Bikila's marathon gold. Wilson Kiprugut( Kenya) won a bronze at 800 metres - improving that to silver in Mexico City (1968)."  

Starting off with his own trials of running a pre-qualification marathon event ( in the preface), the writer goes on to give details of the achievements of athletes from the major nations of  Eastern Africa's Ethiopia and Kenya who have won Africa most of her medals.

" Fortified, I halted pitifully to the stadium entrance and then, again pure hubris, raised my sprint around the remaining 385 yards to the finish where the 13 runners who had preceded me to the tape gave the politest, humorous ripple of applause, the late great Naftali amongst them, still clutching that stopwatch, which recorded me, last man in, as 66 minutes behind the 2.14.00 of the winner, Philip Ndoo....I felt like Pheidippides himself, but Philip's time, at altitude, was faster than that of Bikila's 1960 world record gold medal in Rome."

Though bereft of actual athletes profiles and life beyond the running field, the book captures the performances of each of Africa's best performers track record.

Table 6.6 show African Female 'Black Gold; Hall of Fame where the top 3 female athletes are 'unsuprisingly' Ethiopian; below is a sketched sample of the table;

	Olympics			IAAF World			World Records
	G	S	B	G	S	B
Tirunesh Dibaba (ETH)	2	0	1	4	0	0	1
Meseret Defar (ETH)	1	0	1	1	1	2	2
Derartu Tulu (ETH)	2	0	1	1	1	0

Here's another sample of the writing:

" The narrative has remarked many times with a sense of wonder and admiration at the brilliance of the cast of African runners, their grace, uninhibited speed, beauty, and unbounded, unbridled joie de vivre and joie de courir - kimbia bwana kimbia!"

The book does well to enumerate the achievements of various athletes both male and female who have put Africa on the map. With great images meant to celebrate the track kings and queens, the reader will be taken back over the 5 decades of mixed bag of success and missed opportunities.The medal tallies and various records have been clearly outlined in tables.The same goes for the world records which have been set over the same distances at both the Olympics and World championships. 

The book though is not your usual long prose reading leaving out the finer details of the athletes featured. It would have definitely taken longer to capture such information. It also does not also try to solve the mystery of why athletes from some countries and regions are more successful than others - but does query and make that note in the Introduction.

But for you who's looking to learn what African athletes have achieved, this is a worthy book. For the athletics and sports writers of our generation, the facts and figures are important to note.The foreword is aptly done by Dr. Mike Boit, himself a former Kenyan athlete and various notable sports editors of their time are also acknowledged for the assistance they offered. They include Don Beet formerly with East African Standard and Drum Magazine; John Steward, formerly an expatriate teacher in Kisii and Peter Moll formerly sports editor at the Daily Nation and Africa Sports.

 It will be released soon to coincide with the start of the Olympic Games in London. Here's the link on Amazon. For Kenyan readers, you can contact local publishers , East African Educational Publishers for a copy.