Of Kenya’s 124 Olympic medals, every single one has come from athletics or boxing, and the great majority from middle- and long-distance running. That record makes athletics, and above all distance running, Kenya’s de facto national sport, the one the country is known for worldwide. It is not an official title: Kenya has no sport designated by law, and by everyday following the most popular sport at home is football, played and watched in every county and centred on the Nairobi rivalry between Gor Mahia and AFC Leopards. So the short answer is that running is Kenya’s national sport by achievement and reputation, football by popularity, and neither by statute.
Wilson Kiprugut, Naftali Temu and the Mexico City breakthrough of 1968
Organised athletics in Kenya dates from the colonial period. The Kenya Amateur Athletics Association was formed in 1951, largely so that Kenya could enter the British Empire and Commonwealth Games, and its first team competed at Vancouver in 1954. Kenya made its Olympic debut at Melbourne in 1956. The first Olympic medal came at Tokyo in 1964, when Wilson Kiprugut, who grew up in Kericho, won bronze in the 800 metres.
The real breakthrough was the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City, held at about 2,240 metres above sea level, an altitude that suited runners raised in the Kenyan highlands. Naftali Temu became Kenya’s first Olympic champion by winning the 10,000 metres, passing Ethiopia’s Mamo Wolde with about 50 metres to go. Kipchoge Keino, a police officer born in 1940 in Kipsamo in the Nandi district, won the 1,500 metres by about 20 metres from the American world-record holder Jim Ryun, the largest winning margin in the event’s Olympic history. Kiprugut added silver in the 800 metres. Four years later, at Munich in 1972, Keino won the 3,000 metres steeplechase and took silver in the 1,500 metres.
Keino matters beyond his medals. He later chaired the National Olympic Committee of Kenya until 2017, became an honorary member of the International Olympic Committee in 2000, and was one of the 24 inaugural members of the IAAF Hall of Fame in 2012. The country’s main international track meeting, the Kip Keino Classic, carries his name.
Iten, Eldoret and the Rift Valley running belt
A large share of Kenya’s champions come from a small area of the western highlands, on the edge of the Great Rift Valley, and many of them are Kalenjin, a group of related peoples that includes the Nandi, Kipsigis, Keiyo and Marakwet. The capital of Kenyan running is Iten, a town of about 42,000 people (2019 census) in Elgeyo-Marakwet County. It sits at about 2,400 metres on the western escarpment of the Rift, above the Kerio Valley, on the road between Eldoret and Kabarnet. An estimated 5,000 local and foreign athletes train there daily, many on dirt roads and at the High Altitude Training Centre. St Patrick’s High School in Iten is part of that running community, and David Rudisha started his career at St Francis Kimuron High School in the same county.
Down the road, Eldoret, the capital of Uasin Gishu County with 475,716 people in 2019, is the region’s commercial centre and became Kenya’s fifth city in August 2024. Its elevation ranges from about 2,100 metres at the airport to more than 2,700 metres nearby. Why the region produces so many runners has prompted explanations involving altitude, topography, diet and body build, and none has settled the question. What is not disputed is the culture: thousands of young athletes training together, a ladder of school, road and cross-country races, and the visible proof of earlier champions’ success.
Olympic gold from Rudisha to Kipyegon
Kenya boycotted the 1976 Montreal and 1980 Moscow Games, but from 1984 the medals flowed again across every distance from 800 metres to the marathon. At Beijing in 2008, Kenya won 16 medals, six of them gold, four silver and six bronze, making it Africa’s most successful nation at those Games; Pamela Jelimo won the women’s 800 metres and Samuel Wanjiru the men’s marathon. Women became central to the story after Pauline Konga won Kenya’s first women’s Olympic medal, a 5,000 metres silver in 1996. By Rio in 2016, Kenyan women won seven of the country’s 13 medals.
Three athletes stand out from the recent era. David Rudisha, born in 1988, won the 800 metres at London 2012 in a world record of 1:40.91, still the only run under 1:41, and defended his title at Rio in 2016. Eliud Kipchoge, born in 1984, won the Olympic marathon in 2016 and 2020 and held the marathon world record from 2018 to 2023. Faith Kipyegon, born in 1994, won the 1,500 metres at Rio, Tokyo and Paris, the first woman to win the event three times in a row, and holds world records for the 1,500 metres and the mile.
Boston, London and Chicago: Kenya on the world’s marathon roads
On the roads, the record is just as lopsided. Ibrahim Hussein, from Kapsabet, became the first Kenyan to win the New York City Marathon in 1987 and the first African to win Boston in 1988; he won Boston again in 1991 and 1992. Through 2025, Kenyan men had won Boston 26 times and Kenyan women 17 times, and Catherine Ndereba’s four wins between 2000 and 2005 are the most in the women’s open race. Geoffrey Mutai ran 2:03:02 in Boston in 2011 on a course not eligible for record purposes. Douglas Wakiihuri won London in 1989, and Martin Lel took three London titles.
The most dramatic recent story was Kelvin Kiptum, born in 1999. He won all three marathons he ran, including Chicago in October 2023, where his 2:00:35 broke the world record by 34 seconds. World Athletics ratified the time on 6 February 2024. Five days later Kiptum and his coach were killed in a car crash at Kaptagat, a training settlement in the same highlands. He was 24. In cross-country, too, Kenya was the standard: its senior men’s team won the long-race world title 18 years in a row, from 1986 to 2003, and John Ngugi and Paul Tergat each won five individual world titles.
Athletics Kenya, Riadha House and Kasarani
The governing body today is Athletics Kenya, the name the Kenya Amateur Athletics Association took in 2002. It is a member of World Athletics and the Confederation of African Athletics and is based at Riadha House, beside the Nyayo National Stadium in Nairobi. Its job is partly to select teams for championships, which is no small task in a country with far more world-class distance runners than places on a team. Kenyan-born athletes also compete for other countries, notably Bahrain; about 20 such athletes competed at the 2016 Olympics.
The country’s main athletics venue is the Moi International Sports Centre at Kasarani, in Nairobi. It was built with Chinese funding for the 1987 All-Africa Games and stands at 1,612 metres. It hosted the 2017 World U18 Championships and the 2021 World Athletics U20 Championships, has staged the Kip Keino Classic since its first edition in 2020, part of the World Athletics Continental Tour, and is due to host the 2029 World Athletics Championships. Kenya’s altitude, along with its landscapes from the coast to the highlands described in the guide to Kenya’s geography, is part of what draws foreign athletes to train there.
Harambee Stars and the Mashemeji derby
Football and athletics were the first two sports to be formally organised in Kenya, and football remains the most popular at home. The men’s national team is called the Harambee Stars, from the Swahili word harambee, “all pull together”, which is also Kenya’s national motto and appears on its coat of arms. It is run by the Football Kenya Federation and plays mainly at the Nyayo National Stadium. Its record is modest: FIFA suspended Kenya in 2004 and again in 2006 over government interference and federation problems, and in six Africa Cup of Nations appearances, the latest in 2019, Kenya has never gone beyond the group stage. Kenya will co-host the 2027 Africa Cup of Nations with Uganda and Tanzania, the first edition held in three countries.
The domestic game revolves around the Mashemeji derby (“derby of the in-laws”) between Gor Mahia and AFC Leopards. Both clubs are based in Nairobi but have their roots in western Kenya, and they have been rivals since their first meeting on 5 May 1968. As of 2025, Gor Mahia had a record 21 Kenyan Premier League titles and AFC Leopards 12.
Shujaa, boxing and Kenya’s other sporting claims
Two other sports have given Kenya international success. The rugby sevens team, nicknamed Shujaa (Swahili for courage), won its first World Sevens Series tournament by beating Fiji in the 2016 Singapore Sevens and reached the World Cup Sevens semi-finals in 2009 and 2013. Boxing produced most of Kenya’s non-athletics Olympic medals between the 1960s and 1980s, though its contribution has since declined. In field events, Julius Yego broke through by winning the javelin at the 2014 Commonwealth Games and the 2015 World Championships in Beijing with a throw of 92.72 metres.
None of these changes the basic picture. Football is the sport most Kenyans play and follow week to week; distance running is the sport that has defined Kenya to the rest of the world since 1968, and it is the one most often meant when people speak of Kenya’s national sport. For a sense of how that record compares with other countries, see the table of countries with the most Olympic medals, and for the highland weather that shapes training in Iten and Eldoret, the guide to the climate of Kenya.