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The Kenyan dominance of the Steeplechase is officially over as per the result in the race this morning Oz time evening session of day 4.

Between 1968 and 2016 the only time a Kenyan didn't win the Olympic gold was 1976 and 1980 when Kenya ( along with other African nations, but not all,)  boycotted Montreal over New Zealand being allowed to compete after the All Blacks played a series against the Springboks that year at home,  and 1980 when they joined US led boycott of Moscow Olympics after Soviets invaded Afghanistan. They regularly team ran and made sure a Kenyan won buy along with those 11 gold medals they won 7 silver medals and 4 bronze medals and twice did a clean sweep - 1992 and 2004.

Only other single male event to be clean swept twice by one nation, since the break up of soviet union and eastern European state sports system, has been the USA in 200m in 2004 and 2008.

At WCs the Kenyan's didn't medal in 1983 and 1987 but between 1991 and 2019, Kenyans won all 15 events, but 2 were won in 2003 and 2005 were by Stephen Cherono who was the 20 year old 2002 Commonwealth champion, had been world junior champ and  world junior record holder had a dispute with Kenyan athletics association and  moved from Kenya to Qatar in 2003, along with some other Kenyan athletes. He changed his name to Saif Saaeed Shaheen, he was reported to have received over $1mil to become a Qatari citizen. After he won the 2003 WC in Paris Kenyan athletics protested that he wasn't eligible to represent Qatar in 2004 as he hadn't been a Qatari citizen long enough. The IAAF agreed and he was ruled ineligible. He won 2005 event in Helsinki. He was pissed off about mising the 2004 Olympics and set the WR a few weeks later which stood for almost 19 years until Ethiopian Lamecha Girma  broke it in Paris in June this year.

In those 15 WCs Kenyans also won 12 silvers and 5 bronze medals, but they regularly team run and sacrifice minor medals for wins,  and had 3 clean sweeps in 1997, 2007 and 2015.

It wasn't just that Moroccan El Bakkali has won the last two world champs and also in Tokyo Olympics, but also that Ethiopian Lamecha Girma  has taken silver at those three meets plus in Doha in 2019, by bugger all margins in the 3 before last nights finals, and is now the world record holder, and Kenyans are struggling to get bronzes. They can't team run like they used to. 4 time world and 2 time Olympic champ Ezekiel Kemboi was one of my all time favourite  track athlete.  Don't know if they can find someone else like him or his compatriots of the past, anytime soon.