The Catholic missionary and the Masai running champion

In 2012, David Rudisha, a Masai warrior from Kenya, ran what many say was the greatest race in the history of the Olympics. He led the 800m final from the front and smashed his own world record, becoming the first man ever to run under 1.41. In the words of Seb Coe, ‘Bolt was good, Rudisha was magnificent.’ In interviews after the race he thanked one man above all others for his success: an Irish Catholic missionary named Brother Colm O’Connell — a man with no official athletics training who had nonetheless been David’s coach since he first began to run. And if David wins another gold at the Commonwealth Games next week, he’ll have Colm to thank again.

Brother Colm arrived in Kenya from Ireland as a missionary in 1976, more than ten years before David Rudisha was born. Colm had the idea that he might teach geography at St Patrick’s, a boys’ school at the edge of the Rift Valley. He thought he’d stay three years. Early on, he was asked to lend a hand on the running track, and discovered a passion that has lasted to this day. For Colm, it was ‘a way of getting to know the kids outside the classrooms’ and ‘anything I learnt, I learnt from them in those early days’.

What happened next is now the stuff of legend in Kenya. Under Colm’s guidance, more than 20 Olympic and World Championship medal winners would emerge from this tiny school. The exact number is unclear; as Colm says, ‘I don’t like to count them.’

When I first met Colm in 2004, I was struck by his situation. By now he was the last of the Irish Patrician Brothers left in the school, and he seemed to be at a crossroads.