Sir, – Well done to Ian O’Riordan for his fine article (“Spirit of Iten is a breath of fresh air”, Sport, December 24th) on the training camps for long-distance Kenyan runners.
It left little doubt that the dominance of these athletes is not due to some advantage acquired from living and training at high altitude (a widely-held belief in the running community); but rather to their fierce ambitions, married to a willingness to undertake and endure extremely taxing training regimens. – Yours, etc,