Raiders from the Rift Valley: Cattle raiding and distance running in east Africa

In 1997, I wrote a paper discussing factors that might account for the extraordinary competitive running success of the Kenyan ethnic group known as the Kalenjin (Manners 1997: 14-27). One hypothesis advanced briefly in that paper had to do with the possible connection between running success and the traditional practice of cattle raiding, i.e. stealing cattle from people outside one’s own group. This chapter will explore that connection further.