Quotes of the Day

Kenenisa Bekele discovered running late. Growing up in the hills around Bekoji, in Ethiopia's central highlands, the skinny teenager preferred math and science to sports. If he studied hard, he thought, he could become a teacher or an engineer. The alternative — herding cattle and tending to his family's small patch of land — was daunting. "The world was moving on," he says. "I felt like I wanted to make a difference."

School did provide Bekele with a ticket out, but not the one he expected. In 1997, when Bekele was 16, a teacher watching him play football noticed the boy had exceptional stamina and speed, and suggested he take up running. Inspired by Ethiopian world record-breaker Haile Gebrselassie, Bekele began pounding the dirt roads outside his village. Two years later he was training in Addis Ababa, the capital, and running overseas. Today, he is the fastest man in history over 5,000 m and 10,000 m, and, at 22, is finally ready for his Olympic debut: "When Sydney happened I was still too young and inexperienced. But now that I've bridged the gap, I'll be disappointed if I don't excel."

Standing in his way will be the Kenyan Eliud Kipchoge, who beat Bekele and the great Moroccan Hicham el-Guerrouj in the 5,000 m at last year's world championships. Kipchoge, 19, began training barefoot along the red-soil roads in Kenya's highlands after graduating from high school in 2000. Like many Kenyan athletes his initial aim was simple: to make money. "I said, 'Let me start running so I have something small to support my family,'" he says.

Bekele and Kipchoge are the latest in a long line of running sensations to emerge from Ethiopia and Kenya, which both sit astride Africa's great rift valley and provide ideal altitudes for distance training. Since Ethiopia's Abebe Bikila won marathon gold by gliding barefoot through the streets of Rome in 1960, the two east African nations have dominated men's middle- and long-distance running, sharing 119 Olympic and world championship medals, including 48 golds. For years Kenya had the better of the rivalry, winning almost twice as many medals as its northern neighbor. But in the past three big meets — the 2000 Olympics and world championships in 2001 and 2003 — Kenya has only just beaten Ethiopia (six golds to five). At the world cross-country championships last March, Ethiopia shattered Kenya's 18-year grip on the team trophy, winning 14 of the 18 events. "The other four were our mistakes," jokes Assefa Mamo, head of the Ethiopian Olympic Committee.

The two countries share many of the same raw materials: light, thin runners born and trained at high altitudes (where higher red-blood-cell concentrations in athletes improve strength); a fierce desire to overcome poverty; and incredible reserves of mental and physical stamina. At the same time they offer a fascinating study in contrasting coaching and management styles: Kenya's free-market approach, in which each runner competes primarily for himself, versus Ethiopia's system of central control, in which the country's athletics federation decides where and when the athletes should run. "In Kenya, everybody competes and then the best will be selected," says Kipchoge. "It's not the government that is looking for athletes."

For now, Ethiopia's more rigid system has the momentum. "Ethiopia's success has always been sporadic, and always through one or two individuals" says bbc athletics commentator Mike Costelloe. "But what you're seeing now — and the Kenyans really fear this — is that there are dozens of good, young Ethiopians coming through. There's no doubt Ethiopia has the edge." The Ethiopian system is built around a single, authoritarian coach: Woldemeskel Kostre, 56, who ran track and studied sports pedagogy in communist Hungary before returning to help coach the national team. The grandfatherly figure rules his athletes with a mixture of genuine love and a determination to produce national heroes. Before the Sydney Games, Atlanta gold-medalist Gebrselassie asked if he could visit Europe to treat a nagging injury, meaning he would arrive late in Sydney. "If you don't come with us, then I can't put you in the team," Kostre told Gebrselassie, one of the greatest runners of all time. "So he decided to come with us and he won. We respect and love all our athletes if they are disciplined."

Ethiopia's system is built on such discipline. Promising athletes are brought to Addis Ababa and billeted with one of a dozen sports clubs run by organizations such as the police or the army. They are given a small stipend — "calorie money," Kostre calls it — and training. If they do well they may join Kostre's team on the country's only running track, a decades-old ring of cracks and patched rubber. Athletes who win internationally are awarded an honorary military rank and asked to give 10% of their winnings to the athletics federation.

The federation, which runs on an annual budget of between $200,000 and $500,000, has no accurate stopwatches, and even conserves blank starting-pistol cartridges for big events. But what Ethiopia does have is history. Athletes who complain about poor facilities are reminded that Ethiopia was never colonized; that Bikila was the first African gold medalist; that he won in Rome, barefoot.

The contrast with Kenya could not be more stark. While Kenyan runners come up through the school system, successful young athletes are often poached by European agents and encouraged to run in the Golden League, Europe's lucrative summer circuit. "The free market exists a lot more in Kenya than Ethiopia, and that is also true of athletics," says Richard Nerurkar, a former British Olympic marathon runner who coordinates the annual Great Ethiopian Run. "Kenyans go where the money is and they're allowed to go where the money is." Kipchoge Keino, head of Kenya's Olympic committee, complains that the free market — and greedy agents — are burning out his best athletes. "They're being overworked," says Keino, who won Olympic golds for Kenya in 1968 and 1972. "Running is mental as well as physical, and both the mind and the body require rest."

Ethiopian athletes, by contrast, must get permission to travel abroad, and their relationships with European agents are closely monitored. Some bristle at this tight control. "Globalization means everything is open. But we are still afraid of the outside," complains Getaneh Tessema, a former runner and now the Ethiopian agent for a Dutch sports-management company. Still, there are signs of change. The Ethiopian Olympic Committee wants to attract more sponsorship money. "That means opening up slightly," says Mamo. And in one of the poorest countries in the world, runners like Gebrselassie and Bekele are idols in part because of their financial success. Gebrselassie owns some of Addis Ababa's best real estate while Bekele drives a Toyota Landcruiser and wears a gold-and-diamond ring.

But in Athens Bekele and Kipchoge will be running for glory, not money. "I want to become famous," says Kipchoge. "I'm running for my name to go high." And when the starting pistol is fired, their thoughts will focus on a single goal. "When you're on the track nothing else matters," says Bekele. "All you want to do is win."

• SIMON ROBINSON
• The traditional clash between Ethiopia and Kenya in distance running is also a contest between competing visions of sport