200 days before Paris 2024, French athletes train in Kenya alongside “legends”

Kenya, the land of athletics par excellence, welcomes runners from all over the world seeking to prepare for the Olympic Games. Around fifteen camps are reserved for athletes in Iten, in the east of the country.

Flee the cold and snow to prepare as best as possible for the Olympic Games. This is the obsession, at the moment, of French athletes, less than 200 days before the deadline. Some have therefore chosen to go to Kenya, the land of athletics par excellence. And more precisely in Iten, a small town in the Rift Valley, at an altitude of 2,400 meters, which has become a paradise for long-distance runners from all over the world.

At the entrance to the small town, a large red arch dominates the only paved road, with these words: “Iten, home of champions.” Land of champions, because here, athletes are kings. “When you pass a car here, it goes into the ditch, it waits and the riders pass. Then the car starts again”says Yohan Durand.

“Here you are anonymous”

The marathon runner has been coming here regularly for ten years, to one of the 15 camps reserved for athletes: “You go through the camp gate, you wait two minutes, you’re bound to have a group of runners coming through and then you take the group, you run with them.”

The day had barely dawned when the Frenchman, like every morning for over a month, took one of the many red dirt roads in pursuit of his training comrades. “It’s true that we are often dumped so our ego takes a hit, assures Yohann Durand. If you thought you were the best runner in France or I don’t know what, here you are an anonymous person among the Kenyan runners.”

And the benefit is immense, firstly because the courses are hilly and above all because the altitude of 2,400 m is ideal: “The amount of oxygen is reduced and as a result your body produces red blood cells to support this oxygen deficiency. When you then return to sea level, you are much stronger.”

“This is the year or never to come here to train”

At 37, the Frenchman is preparing for the Seville marathon in mid-February, where he hopes to glean one of the three tickets for the Paris Games. So this internship, which costs him around 3,000 euros for five weeks, including plane, is an investment: “I could have put in a lot more because it’s a lifelong dream and it’s the year or never to come here to train and make investments.”

Like Yohan Durant, six months before the Olympics, many athletes are stopping by here, confirms Romain Guilig, co-founder of the Runix camp, popular with the French: “The great Kenyan champions simply come from here. There are truly legends who come from this corner of Kenya and legends who still train there. The typical example is (Eliud) Kipchoge who must be the best known in the world.” And the French are far from being the only ones: this week, Romanians, Japanese, Norwegians, Dutch, crossed paths in the Iten forest.