Chepkwony and other athletes began to worry about the fate of Lucas Sang, a runner on Kenya's 1988 Olympic team who became a successful farmer. After a fruitless search of area hospitals, the group headed to a mortuary "where there was blood flowing on the ground," Chepkwony recalled. "Finally, we found the body."
Sang had been hacked to death by a machete-wielding mob, his corpse burned, Chepkwony said, adding, "We recognized him through his running shoes, his running jacket. He was beheaded."
According to news reports, a second runner was killed by an arrow.
"We used to run peacefully," said Linus Maiyo, 25, who lives just outside Eldoret and raced last weekend in Puerto Rico. "Now it is troubling. You don't know if maybe you are going to meet somebody who might beat or kill you. It is very hard to just walk around if you have any kind of sports clothes on."
During a news conference Friday in Los Angeles, Kenyan runner Frederic Kiplimo said that he had encountered dead bodies, pools of blood and a severed hand while attempting to train early this year.
"You can't run and you can't sleep because many of the people are screaming and houses are being burned down," said Kiplimo, whose wife, Jacquline Nyetipei, is one of the elite Kenyans invited to run Sunday in Los Angeles.
Even before the violence, some runners feared that they were being targeted for political and tribal reasons -- or simply because runners are envied for their financial success.
"They risk being seen as status symbols because of money which makes them prosperous targets," said Matthew Turnbull, who recruits top runners for San Diego's Elite Racing, which operates nine races around the country.
A $25,000 purse in the U.S. might be seen as modest, Turnbull said, "but that can change a lot of peoples' lives, not just the winner's. Even $10,000 can change several generations of life in Kenya."
Mark Saina, for example, used part of his $110,000 prize for winning the 2006 L.A. Marathon to help build a church near Eldoret. "We have so many people that are less fortunate," Saina said at the time. "I feel happy that I will be able to help in that way."
Kenyan runners have long invested their earnings in the local economy, said Jackie Lebo, a Kenyan who has written for running publications and websites. Some have purchased commercial real estate in Eldoret. The area also benefits from a "whole class of middle-tier athletes who run, not to represent the country in Olympic or world championships, but to make a living," Lebo said in an e-mail. "They are journeymen with no illusions."
