The talent and brief career of Daniel Komen...

Many of you may be wondering who Daniel Komen is? Growing up in poverty in rural Kenya, he ran everywhere as a child and when he burst upon the athletics world in the late 90's, his training and natural ability saw him produce some remarkable times.

As well as setting several records, he is probably best remembered today for 2 events...

He is the only person ever to have run 2 miles in under 8 minutes. He ran the 1st mile in 3:59.4, exactly the same time that Roger Bannister ran when he broke the first sub 4 minute mile back in 1954. He then however continued and ran the 2nd mile in under 4 minutes as well to set a new record of 7:58.61 for 2 miles.

He also ran a time of 7:20.67 for the 3000 metres in Italy in 1996, beating the previous record by a huge 4.5 seconds. What makes this even more remarkable is that he had run a 5 km race in 13:02 in Berlin just 2 days earlier. That 3000m time still stands to this day.



After the initial flush of success and the wealth that came with it, he eased off on the amount of training believing that natural talent would suffice. Soon however, his times dropped and he faded away from the international athletics scene.

One interesting sidenote is that back in the late 90's, Daniel Komen raced against another noted runner....a certain Haile Gebrselassie. In contrast to Komen, Gebrselassie continued with the arduous training regime year after year to become one of the greatest athletes of all time.

A more comprehensive article on Daniel Komen can be found on this website.