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Bernard Lagat: Born in Kenya, US passport, Canadian wife, Chinese trainer - but his heart beats for Germany

'I always run with my children - that's why I put their pics on my spikes'
©Werner Miguel Daxner

Twice gold at World Championships and two Olympic gold medals – these are the credentials of an African-born American who loves Germany. When, after a breathtaking finish, Bernard Lagat won bronze in the 1.500m finals at the World Championships, there were people on every continent who kept their fingers crossed for him. Are you a globetrotter? "No, I love the world, I’m a global player – my wife is Canadian and my trainer is Chinese." The 34-year-old Kenyan is an advocate of freedom: "The world should be open to everyone." One of his best friends is a Swabian from southern Germany, Christian Lenk, who has his share of Lagat’s success.

"We train together, party, barbecue – we really have a lot of fun," says Christian Lenk, an average German middle-distance runner, who is at Bernard Lagat’s side when he is in Tuebingen, in the summers. "I even have my small share in the two world titles that Bernard won in Osaka: I had to look after his dog Miss Piggy back in Swabia. Bernard knew that his pug was in good hands," Lenk jokes.

He had recognized Lagat’s potential very early on. "I was at the Grand Prix Meeting in Stuttgart in 1998 as a fan. Lagat came in tenth in 3:34.48 – I ran towards the mixed zone, and I was the only one who wanted his autograph. Nobody was interested in Lagat then," Lenk recalls. From then on, the middle-distance runner watched Lagat’s career and also visited him at a training camp that manager James Templeton organized in Baden-Wuerttemberg in 1997. That’s where they struck a friendship. Later, Lagat even bought an apartment in an estate of terraced houses in Tuebingen, and today, Germany is where Lagat prefers to live and spend the summers. People from Tuebingen laid the parquet flooring in his apartment and put on the finishing touches. "I am a Swabian," Lagat says, albeit in English. He is 1.75 m tall, but weighs a mere 61 kg. "His language is the only thing that distinguishes him from a Swabian, but now he wants to learn German. At least he knows how to say ‘Dankeschoen’ and ‘Apfelschorle’ (apple spritzer)," Lenk says.

Why does he feel more at home in Tuebingen than in his native Tucson, Arizona? "It’s a small town like my former hometown Kabsabet in Kenya. I like student towns, the young folks create a good, positive atmosphere," Lagat explains. He likes to mingle, have lunch at the railway station restaurant and go shopping in Stuttgart with his wife Gladys and his children Mika and Gianna. In turn, people in Tuebingen admire their world-famous fellow-citizen. After Osaka in 2007, mayor Boris Palmer threw a party and proudly declared: "Germany won two gold medals in the World Championships. So did Tuebingen."

What about his relationship to the USA? "I studied Economics in Washington D.C., now I’m competing for a big country, and I’m proud of that. Especially this year, in Berlin, in the stadium in which Jesse Owens showed up the German racist dictatorship. We are free human beings, and all honest, well-meaning citizens should be able to live and work wherever they want to. That would be fantastic."

Even when he won his first title at the World Students Championships, Lagat felt that he might be onto something really big. He muses: "There are athletes who can give everything they have, but who don’t run especially well. Then there are athletes with a lot of talent, but they keep getting injured. And finally there are athletes who can exhaust themselves and don’t get injuries all the time – luckily, I’m one of them." Him winning a bronze medal in Berlin confirms this. And there’s still the 5.000 metres this coming Sunday …

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