The most obscure Kenyan distance star of the twenty-first century

Noah Ngeny famously slew a hungry Hicham El Guerrouj for Sydney Olympic gold, is one of three members of the sub-3:45-mile "club," and still holds a world record

It’s big news whenever someone runs under 3:30 for 1,500 meters. Thirty-eight men have done it a total of 111 times, with Steve Cram of Great Britain becoming the club’s founding member on July 16. 1985 in Nice, France. Thirty-eight men, thirty-eight summers.

One of these men is Noah Ngeny (either “NEE-yen” or “Nuh-GEN-nee,” depending on the announcer). Still only 43, the long-dormant Kenyan racked up seven sub-3:30 performances in his career. While this number is far short of Hicham El Guerrouj’s twenty-eight, Ngeny ran all of his sub-3:30s between July 21, 1999, and August 11, 2000.

Although he was only 20 years old for the first five of these races, Ngeny was perhaps the least surprising addition to the sub-3:30 roster in history, as he’d chased El Guerrouj to a mile world record two weeks earlier in Rome.

El Guerrouj’s 3:43.13 and Ngeny’s 3:43.30 from that race twenty-three years ago yesterday both eclipsed the 1993 world record of 3:44.39 by Noureddine Morceli of Algeria. Those three times stand as the fastest three one-mile times ever recorded. In fact, El Guerrouj, Ngeny, and Morceli remain the only men to run the mile faster than 3:46.32.

On September 29, 2000, in Sydney, Australia, Ngeny gave El Guerrouj motivation to keep competing for four more years. In the Olympic 1,500-meter final, Ngeny edged past El Guerrouj down the final straight, denying the heavily favored Moroccan—who even benefitted from a countrymate serving as a pacemaker—a gold medal in his signature event. El Guerrouj had also reached the 1,500-meter final in 1996 in Atlanta, but had wound up falling, with the race won by Morceli.

El Guerrouj went on to win gold at the 2004 Olympics in both the 1,500 meters and the 5,000 meters. Ngeny, on the other hand, was involved in a car crash in late 2001, months after Kenya had dropped him from its World Championships 1,500-meter squad for failing to return to Kenya from his training base in Britain. He never ran faster than 3:33.02 after that, was unable to defend his Olympic title, and announced his retirement in 2006 at age 27.

Ngeny set one senior outdoor world record, running 2:11.96 for 1,000 meters in September 1999. That time broke Sebastian Coe’s 18-year-old mark of 2:12.18, and no one has even broken 2:13 since. The kilometer is a rarely contested event, so outlier times are perhaps to be expected. But 2:11.96 is 1:45.56 plus half a lap at the same pace. It’s also a very slow time in a well-functioning automobile, but that context isn’t as helpful.

Testing for EPO was not instituted until 2000, just before the Olympics. But the relevance of EPO testing isn’t its potential to “clean up” the sport and never was. The history of its use and its “victims” demonstrate its real purposes: a standing threat to keep popular and successful athletes from getting on the wrong side of national or international athletics governing officials or administrators, and a tool to eject the occasional sacrificial lamb from active competition and onto the suspended list so that fans can pretend someone in charge actually thinks doping is organically problematic to professional athletics.

You should, if conscious and not prone to moving your lips when reading alone, assume that none of the people in this discussion whose careers lasted into the 1990s lacked access to EPO. The reason El G and Ngeny and Daniel Komen and Kenenisa Bekele and Haile Gebrselassie were all so good is that they were all using PEDs. It’s pointless to even privately believe otherwise.

But within that assumption, it’s possible to pick clear heroes while designating other athletes as sordid, unlikable folx whose careers should have collapsed into smoldering ruins for reasons beyond PED use. I advise being whimsical and mean about this. I like Ngeny for having the stones in 2016 to complain that Kenya wasn’t properly addressing the doping endemic among its top distance runners.

The 1,500-meter world record is 3:26.00, set by El Guerrouj in 1998—with Ngeny as one of the pacesetters. Two other men have broken 3:27:00: Kenyan-born American Bernard Lagat (3:26.34, 2001) and Kenyan Asbel Kiprop (3:26.69, 2015). El G was treated as clean by World Athletics for his entire fabulous career, but both Lagat and Kiprop were involved in doping scandals.

Lagat tested positive for EPO in 2003 and missed that year’s World Championships, but he was officially cleared of doping when his “B” sample tested negative. (I’m convinced that the slow-motion “B sample” process that follows a positive doping test is a concept invented solely to facilitate bribery and extortion between athletes, testing labs, and athletics governing bodies.) Any doubt that his exoneration was a face should have evaporated in 2005, when it emerged that Lagat had become a U.S. citizen in March 2004, months before competing for Kenya at the 2004 Summer Olympics. Lagat’s team lied about this until lying was no longer possible.

To me, the height of Lagat’s career as an American was in the 2012 Olympic 5,000-meter final, when he was tripped by a Kenyan in the final meters and stumbled over the finish line one spot out of a medal. He should have been deported for good as soon as the shenanigans with his paperwork were discovered years before.

The most unfortunate thing about a 28-year-old dirty athlete being allowed to slide isn’t the tainted records or medals he may already hold and is forever allowed to keep. It’s that such an athlete has been granted not merely in-the-moment clemency but assurance from all official stakeholders involved that he can go right on doping, and more fearlessly than before. Lagat went on to set over a half-dozen American records and win a bevy of U.S. national titles. He ran 27:49 for 10,000 meters at age 41, pre-superspikes.

But Lagat smiles a lot and has a wife and two kids, so everyone has long pretended this classic dirtbag is honorable. Everyone except certain top Americans, anyway. Does anyone ever consider that kids need to eat and that it’s easier to feed them when you do whatever it takes to excel at your job?

Kiprop was not so fortunate after peeing hot for EPO. In April 2018, the three-time 1,500-meter world champion and Kenyan National Police Service officer was suspended for four years (retroactive to November 2017). He soon asked to be fired and vaguely threatened to use a firearm against someone, and apparently made something akin to a home skin flick while cucking a pal’s wife. I prefer Kiprop’s openly and adventurously combative spirit to Lagat’s practiced facade of geniality.

Ngeny sits at number six on the all-time outdoor 1,500-meter list (3:28.12), six spots and 0.68 seconds ahead of Kenya’s Elijah Manangoi, the 2017 world champion who was suspended for two years at the end of 2019 and, to his credit, took responsibility for breaking the rules. Manangoi is right in front of Mohammed Farah of Great Britain (3:28.81), a fellow who never tested positive as far as the public knows, but whom I’d bet not one person alive actually trusts. Especially Galen Rupp.

Noah Ngeny and Daniel Komen both had short, stellar careers. But at least fans got to see Komen run a wider range of events. Ngeny was a solid and regular, but not quite superior, 800-meter runner (1:44.49 PR). He ran one 3,000 meters, a 7:35.46 for first place in a noncompetitive race in Spain. He was certainly at his best in the 1,500 meters and mile, but probably could have eked out a sub-7:30 at some point.

I’d be surprised if many people my age reading this, even hardcore fans, have thought of Ngeny in decades; a few may not recall remember Ngeny. He was pleasing to watch, very methodical and with none of his strategies recondite: Follow the Moroccan and whoever was pacing him for a few minutes, then try to sneak into the lead with a flat-out but perfectly timed kick. He will always be history’s only obscure 3:43 miler, because the next man who does so will have a coach who permanently bans him from driving or riding in cars.