Defending Champion Is Streaky Kind of Runner

Stephen Ndungu calls himself an "amateur" compared to the top distance runners in his native Kenya.

But if the 35-year-old father of three wins the 18th Los Angeles Marathon on Sunday, he will join a select club.

A victory would be Ndungu's third consecutive and, combined with his victories in the Houston Marathon from 1998-2000, make him one of only three runners to have won three consecutive races in two major-city marathons.

American Bill Rodgers, the fourth man to break 2 hours and 10 minutes in the marathon, won four consecutive New York City Marathon titles from 1976-79 and three consecutive Boston Marathon championships from 1978-80.

German Katrin Dorre, the only woman to have posted top-five marathon finishes in three Olympic Games, was the London Marathon champion from 1992-94 and the Frankfurt Marathon champion from 1995-97.

The L.A. and Houston marathons aren't held in the same esteem as those in New York, Boston or London. But a victory by Ndungu on Sunday would show him, once again, that he made a wise decision in 1997 when he began to pursue his dream of becoming a professional marathoner.

"It would mean a great thing to me," the soft-spoken Ndungu said. "It's unheard of for one to go and win L.A. twice in a row. And if I make it three, I'm going to make history.... To me it would be a great achievement."

Ndungu, the oldest of eight children, says he wasn't a "strong sportsman" growing up. But he wanted to find a way to keep fit when he joined the Kenyan military at 22.

He tried playing soccer, but struggled.

He gave volleyball a shot, but found his 5 feet 7 inches limited his success.

But running was something he enjoyed.

So Ndungu ran to keep fit. Then, when John Kagwe, another Kenyan in the military, began to excel in marathons in the mid-1990s, Ndungu started to think about becoming a professional runner.

"He would finish maybe 30 or 40 minutes in front of me in long [training] runs," Ndungu said of Kagwe, who won the New York Marathon in 1997 and '98. "But I eventually got better and began to think, 'If he can make it, why not me?' "

Ndungu says he didn't know what he was doing when he made his marathon debut in Berlin in September 1997 at 30, but he averaged a shade over five-minutes-a-mile pace while finishing 14th with a 2:11:16 clocking in the 26-mile 385-yard race.

He won for the first time at Houston in 1998, following with victories there in 1999 and 2000.