Meet Kenya's first female Olympian Tecla Chemabwai

While it is impressive that Tecla Chemabwai was the first Kenyan woman to compete in the Olympics, what is more jaw-dropping is that she might have been only 13 years old when she did it.

I discover this when I ask her if she is 71, as some online sources say she is.

“I’m not 71,” she says. “What happened was that at that time in 1968, according to the Constitution, you could not be given a passport if you were under 18. I did not know it at the time but the officials lied.... Otherwise I was born in 1956.”

An interesting coincidence, as 1956 was the first time Kenya participated in the Olympics, but women did not represent Kenya until 12 years later, just in time for Chemabwai’s debut.

Five years later, she became the first Kenyan woman to win a gold medal at the All-Africa Games when she won the 400 metres race in 1973.

Kenya is not known for sprinting, but that is how she began before becoming renowned as a middle-distance runner. Decades later, she is yet to slow down. At 65, she still goes on a run of, at least five-kilometres every morning.

“You know I am so attached to athletics that when I don’t train, even just for my own benefit, I don’t feel well that day,” she says.

Seeing as it is the Olympics season and I’m talking to one of Kenya’s pioneer Olympians, I ask; is she watching the games?

 “Of course! The only ones I haven’t watched are the ones at three in the morning,” she says.

The elephant in the room is that by the time of this interview, Kenya has had an uncharacteristic drought of gold medals at the ongoing Tokyo games.

“I’ve been trying to compare this Olympics and the previous ones, and this one has been very unique. Psychologically, we have events that we ‘own’, where we know that automatically we defeat other countries,” she says. “The reason I am saying this Olympics has been a unique one is because it looks like the athletes are all of the same level. Countries which have not been winning medals have been surprising and winning them.

“When I was watching this tall girl, Athing Mu from the US, I got very interested and I said that she was capable of breaking the world record. The way she was running – she’s so relaxed, you know?”

Mu was the first woman from the United States to win the gold medal in Chemabwai’s forte, the 800-metre race, since 1968.

“The event that I was running in has changed drastically and I guess it is because of techniques of training, technology and also the style of running,” she says. “In our time, it was a struggle because we did not have coaches and we did not have facilities.”

Her first training ground was her route to school, which was 11 kilometres away. She would run to and from school out of necessity, inadvertently building her endurance.

During competitions, her mind wasn’t usually on winning, but getting to represent the District Commissioner (DC).

 “We would start our competition at the location level and then when you progress and got to represent the DC at the provincial championships it was very exciting because the DC was a big person. The beauty was just being selected to represent him. It was not even that you were a good runner. We did not have that kind of logic that you were a good runner, no!” she says with a laugh.

“Even at the national levels it was that ‘I am representing my Provincial Commissioner (PC).’ You wanted to wear the t-shirt written ‘Rift Valley’. When he came and talked to you, it made you feel good. And he would give us a lorry. There were no buses, we were using lorries. And something else was that the PC would give us allowances which could be Sh3 per day. That was a lot of money! It was very nice.”

If her mother had had her own way, however, we would never have had Chemabwai the athlete. Back then, girls did not do athletics and it was unthinkable to her mother that her daughter should involve herself in such.

“My mum could not allow it because she was very scared. She had this fear of getting pressure from the community and being told that their daughter was bewitched. So my mother would say, ‘You know they are going to kill you’.”

So when did she accept it?

 “When I progressed and she did not see any bewitching setting in, she accepted it,” says Chemabwai, laughing heartily. “That was when she allowed me. And my brother helped too. He would tell her to let me be. The community also accepted me because I was now representing them. We had community competitions and you know in those days, villagers loved athletics!”

When Chemabwai first qualified for the Olympics , she was a Standard Seven pupil and didn’t even know she had qualified, or what the Olympics were.

“In Olympics, you must have a qualifying standard. I qualified as a 400-metre runner without my knowledge at a weekend competition in Kisumu. The qualifying standard at that time was 54 seconds and I had attained that. So later on when they were picking the team was when I was told I had qualified.

“This issue of youth, junior and all that was not there during that time. Athletics was one group. We did not have junior or youth, Under 17, Under 20 – it was not there that time. As soon as you could run and perform, you qualified.”

That way she, Elizabeth Chesire and Lydia Stephens-Oketch who was then a student at the University of Nairobi, became the first three women to go to the Olympics. That was also the first time she would have a coach, the late Charles Mukora.

Being so young, for Chemabwai the excitement was just about being selected.

 “Making the team for me was what was important to me. Running was not so important. Travelling in an a plane, meeting white people, eating different food – that was what was making me happy. It was not about ‘let me go and win’. I was just excited to be there,” she says.

She did not think she could win anyway.

“I was so skinny and here I was, running with white people, something I had never seen in my life. I was a village girl. I had not gotten the opportunity to see them. We had never seen Nairobi. So even coming across a white person was not easy. So you can see, here you are, you are on the line with them. What was happening in my mind was that those white people would just pass me. So you lose the race before you even compete.

“And then we did not have people to talk to us. Here you are, being handled by men. That shyness of being a girl. Then you hear that the matron, who was the person in charge of the girls, is a principal of a college. Honestly, you as a young girl, what are you going to talk to her about?”

She later on, however, understood that you needed to win as the medals were counted and the country would be ranked according to that.

While she started out in 400 meters as a sprinter, she would later switch to middle-distance running while in the university on an athletics scholarship in the US courtesy of her coach, Dr Dorothy Ridges, who she had met in Australia.

“She said that I could not make it in the US as a sprinter. I knew that because I had matured by then. So she changed me into an 800-metre runner, in which I performed very well. I went to the commonwealth games in 1978 and got a silver medal,” she says.

Alongside her athletics career, once she attained her degree in Physical Education and Psychology, she came back and joined Rift Valley Institute of Science and Technology where she was a dean of students, then taught at Mosoriot Teachers’ Training College for five years before joining Moi University in 1987. She was there until she retired recently.

Today, she runs her own school, The Chemabwai Sang Educational Centre. It is an academic institution and an athletics school as well.

“The school is assisting needy children. That is what I am offering to my community. I also help those who can be very good athletes from childhood. That child who sees me as a role model. Because when I’m there, they know that their director was a good athlete.

“When they see me on TV or the newspapers it helps them because they come and say excitedly, ‘Director! I have seen you on the newspapers!’ and I will tell them, ‘What made me reach that newspaper is because of my legs. Can your legs also help you achieve something?’ It motivates them.

“I want to see it grow and improve so that when time comes and I leave this world, I will have left a legacy.”