The front of the pack

From Kenya to UGA, professor Rose Chepyator-Thomson sets a pace that brings everyone up to speed

by Alex Crevar (AB '93)

n the first day of spring semester, in a white cinderblock classroom inside UGA's Ramsey Student Center, Rose Chepyator-Thomson introduces herself to her "Curriculum Planning in Physical Education" graduate students. Her opening line: "I don't tolerate whiners." And then she quizzes them about her homeland. "How many of you know where Kenya is?" Most say nothing—stunned by this African ball of energy, whose lyrical, vocal cadence makes you want to laugh, sing, or straighten at attention in your desk, depending on where she places the high notes. The purpose of this graduate class is to investigate methods by which teachers create course plans and then decide how that process can be more equitable across race, gender, and cultural lines. Thomson continues her line of questioning: "Is it in Eastern Africa? Central?" Silence. "I grew up on the 'the Rift' at an altitude of 8,000 feet. It was here that I learned to run." She says this without a trace of the pretension that could—should—legitimately accompany the fact that she was an eleven-time track and cross country All-American at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and once considered Africa's fastest woman in the 1500 and 3000 meters.

Thomson has been a professor of physical education and sports studies—a department housed within the college of education and dedicated to scholarship and the preparation of future teachers and coaches—since 1996. According to Thomson, her job now is to cultivate student minds so they have a "tripartite" of consciousness, which includes upbringing, educational background, and their relationships with professors. "Dr. Thomson holds a very high expectation for her students," says graduate student Wenhao Liu. ". . . [She] is full of multicultural approaches . . . very important in this increasingly multicultural society." Thomson first teaches students information with which they are familiar—education concepts and corresponding examples from, for instance, Georgia—then she moves on to the unfamiliar, expanding students' education beyond state and national borders.

The idea of broaching perceived boundaries has been a recurring theme for Thomson. She has been setting trends for nearly five decades as a female Kenyan runner, then as part of a mixed-race marriage, then as a married runner, then as an All-American with two children (sons Patrick and Kip), and now as a researcher, exploring Kenyan athletic prowess.

"As the first-born in my family, breaking ground was nothing new to me," says Thomson. "What was strange, however, was the way I made a stand about women running in Kenya during the 70s—I did it on the track and by running in many races. The stand took the whole country by surprise. Basically, I was making a statement that women could take to the track or anything else to make for a different and rewarding experience for them and their families in postcolonial Kenya. In hindsight, it was a radical stand, indeed." or many Kenyans, Mexico City—even as much as Kenya's capital, Nairobi—could be considered the birthplace of pride and modern identity. It was there in 1968 that a five-year-old republic earned three Olympic gold medals from three different runners, the third of whom, Kip Keino, is regarded today the way Americans might honor Michael Jordan if he were also a returning war hero. With a gall bladder infection that doctors said was too severe to compete, Keino paid no heed and on the day of the 1500-meter final got out of a taxi, which was stuck in notorious Mexico City traffic, and ran the remaining distance to the Olympic stadium. He then beat the world record holder by 20 meters.

"[Kenyans'] path to world stardom is based on attitude, interest, and determination along with having a total commitment to where one is from," says Thomson, who shakes hands firmly when she greets someone. ("Kenyans shake hands. We are not huggers.") Her smile is flat and mischievous and her eyes squint as if including that person in an inside joke. "That [dedication] really separates the stellar runners," adds Thomson, who studies the sociology and psychology of Kenyan runners to learn, resolve, and dispel genetic myths that surround Kenya's folkloric rise on the international racing circuit. "Just like Shakespeare studied his own people, the English, I have focused on Kenyan runners to discover their way of running that has stunned the world at large."

Thomson needs little in the way of study subjects. She was the premier female Kenyan runner from 1971 to 1979, posting the fastest African time in the 3000 meters in 1978. And she did this amid an unflagging dedication that saw her bear two children (1975-76); suffer the jeers of countrymen who believed that for a woman to run after marriage was akin to open defiance; and miss two Olympic games during her prime due to boycott. Her determination led to an explosion of women who ran from the Rift and into the world arena. Runners like Tegla Loroupe, the two-time New York City Marathon winner, and Catherine Ndereba, who broke the women's world marathon record with a time of 2:18:47 in the Chicago Marathon. In Thomson's day, such female behavior—running for no reason but to run—was heresy. "Mrs. Rose Chepyator Thomson stunned the whole of Africa when she became the fastest woman to run the classic events of the 1500 and 3000 meters," says His Excellency Daniel Toroitich Arap Moi, the President of the Republic of Kenya (1978-2002), from his home in Kabarak, Kenya. "She not only set an example for women in the country but also for other women across the continent. She is a role model both for her running and her achievements in education. We are proud of her, as a nation, and of her accomplishments in track and academics."

hat most are aware of two Kenyan icons—1) Mt. Kilimanjaro, the continent's tallest peak, which straddles the country's southern border, and 2) great distance runners—is no coincidence. They are both products of the Great Rift Valley, which stretches 4,000 miles from the Dead Sea to Mozambique, due south of Kenya on the Indian Ocean. The Rift is an enormous depression and the result of inactive volcanoes interspersed with tectonic lakes and three tectonic plates that are believed to be moving away from one another. On either side of this "huge scar" are highlands, which in Kenya fall on the equator. These circumstances—altitudes of between 8,000 and 10,000 feet and mild temperatures—have created fertile conditions for a dominant breed of runner. It was in such an environment that Thomson was born, nine years before the Mau Mau insurrection helped earn Kenya its independence from Britain in 1963.

In modern Kenya, according to Thomson, women are the glue that holds the culture together. "They are responsible for raising the next generation. Many think that if a woman is involved in something like running, she will not be there to help the child graduate from childhood and into the community." It is in this environment that Thomson was raised. And in this paternal society the first great male Kenyan runners trained on the Rift's highlands and gained acclaim in Mexico City. That the same characteristics—lean, sinewy bodies, healthy diets, altitude training, and determined wills—might also help women succeed, was not taken seriously. Women did not even compete until 1968 and it was not until 1978 that a Kenyan woman would win a gold medal in an international competition (the Commonwealth Games). It was with a yearning to make a difference doing something she both excelled at and loved that Thomson began to run, and break away.

he oldest of 11 children, Thomson woke up every morning in Kapkon'ga village (260 miles northwest of Nairobi) to an assortment of chores, which changed as she "graduated from them," passing on the easier or less desirable ones to younger brothers and sisters. She milked and herded the cows and carried water on her head from the river more than a mile away. Her house was on a hill equidistant from the western edge of the Rift and the plateau of Uasingishu overlooking Mt. Elgon, that forms the border between Kenya and Uganda. "The landscape of my childhood was the undulating hills of the Cherngani and the Elgon mountain, which, at precisely 6:58 every evening, hid the sun." Thomson's school was three miles away. "So we had to run to school in the morning and run back home for lunch and go back to school and then really run home because if you were late for dinner, my father wasn't happy. When you are young, and as a Kenyan, you don't think about distances (12 miles to and from and to and from school) and wish you did not have to walk or run them. You just do it." According to Thomson, a Kenyan street scene is all together different than one in the U.S. "People are moving fast because everyone has somewhere to be. And they aren't driving—even expectant mothers. It's not like here where when you get pregnant you take the year off. Kenyan women do physical activities until they give birth. I was still training up to my ninth month."

Thomson's ethnic group, Kalenjin, is the fifth largest (9.8 percent of the population) of Kenya's 70 ethnic groups, but it is by far the most prolific in terms of runners. In an essay entitled "Kenya's Running Tribe," John Manners, who has researched the Kalenjin for years, believes that Kalenjin won 40 percent of the biggest international races in men's distance running from 1987-97. To which he writes, "I contend that this record marks the greatest geographic concentration of achievement in the annals of sport." Theories about this success range from genetics to altitude, but for Thomson—who speaks fluent English, Swahili, and Kalenjin—there is only one real explanation: hard work. "There are plenty of places in the world with high elevation to train," says Thomson. "But a Kenyan simply will not compete unless he or she is completely ready for competition. Kenyan runners train very hard and, in most cases, train as a group, and this encourages or challenges other runners to step up to the world of record breakers."

Thomson's first race was actually a punishment, when a teacher made her high school sophomore class run a timed three miles for misunderstanding a homework assignment. She won, and the next year, now a member of the cross-country team, she represented the Rift Valley in the 800 and 1500 meters. She continued to improve and raise the level of women's running, which was encouraged until her pursuit of championships intersected with a pursuer—future husband and Peace Corps volunteer Norman Thomson. Norman, now a UGA education professor, had finished two years in Uganda and was working in Kenya as a biology teacher when the two married in 1974. "Sometimes the lion does get the Buffalo," says Thomson of her marriage to Norman because her clan within the Kalenjin is the buffalo. "Marrying someone from a distant land was such a radical thing to do at the time but my family did not feel bad about this. They did worry about my being too far away from them. I remember my mother saying, 'Are we ever going to see you again?'" Thomson returns every year for research and to lead UGA's study abroad program in Kenya.

Far greater than her family's protests of her departure though were the many Kenyan reactions to Thomson's running after marriage. "They would say things like, 'Why aren't you at home?' and 'Why are you competing against young school girls—it's not fair.'" In 1979, the Thomsons left for the states and Thomson, 25, chose Wisconsin over UCLA because Norman's family lived 16 miles from the Madison campus. Despite the new cold weather conditions (Her first meet was in October; wind chill: -10. "I thought the snow was bugs coming out of the sky."), Thomson was a two-time national champion (1500 meters outdoors, and 4 x 800-yard relay), a six-time Big 10 track champion, and a three-time Big Ten cross-country champ between 1979-83. She also excelled in the classroom as the 1983 Big Ten Medal of Honor recipient and a 1983 NCAA post-graduate scholarship winner.

After completing her undergraduate degree, rewriting the track record book, and bolstering the reputation of Wisconsin's track program, Thomson stayed on to earn two master's and a Ph.D. She was inducted into the Wisconsin Athletic Hall of Fame in 1994. "Rose could not help but be an excellent role model for our young athletes," says Kit Nordeen, UW's first director of women's athletics. "She was an especially outstanding example because she was excellent in both [athletics and academics]. Her name is now indelibly engraved in the history of Wisconsin athletics and will be there for all to see and appreciate."

Another of Thomson's fans was Bill Clinton's former secretary of health and human services, Donna Shalala, who was the first woman to head a Big 10 university when she became UW's president in 1988. "Rose represents all that is good about opportunity in this country," says Shalala, who is now president of the University of Miami. "A serious academic, hard working, and a gifted athlete. She brought a wonderful background to the University of Wisconsin-Madison."

fter five years as a professor and track coach at the State University of New York-Brockport, Thomson came to UGA to concentrate solely on academics. "I have gone to the highest level in running and now I want to get to the highest level in scholarly writing." Her experience and dedication make that a likely goal, and one which UGA students, who follow her to Africa during research jaunts for the Kenya Study Abroad Program, also benefit from. Paul Schempp, head of the sports studies department, agrees, "[Her] background and initiatives in her native country provide a valued perspective for both our faculty and students."