In his book ‘Henry Rono: Olympic Dream’, legendary distance runner Henry Rono reveals his frustration with his handlers, and also details how he met his wife Jennifer Chepkemboi in Kabirirsang Primary School in Nandi County .
He says in part: “After running meets in Europe at the end of summer, I returned to Pullman to continue work on my degree. One afternoon, that fall, as I sat down in the cafeteria between my classes, a Swedish TV crew showed up unannounced to film a feature on me.
The crew informed me that they had first contacted the KAAA and paid $5,000 for the rights to interview me. They said they had also contacted coach Chaplin. I told them they should have first thought to contact me. I was tired of Chaplin and the KAAA making decisions for me behind my back and trying to control my career, and so I declined the interview.
The crew asked me for their money back. I told them I wasn't sure whether just the KAAA or KAAA and Chplin took their money and then asked them, " Shouldn't you ask for your money from the person who took it?"
“The TV crew ended up filming Mike Kosgei. When I asked him why he agreed to the filming, he said,
"They went through the trouble to travel all this distance, and I don't want them to leave empty-handed; besides, it's not their fault that the KAAA swindled and misled them.
"After the incident, I was not surprised to find out that Ongeri had refused to return the money to the Swedish television station.
“That fall semester was exhausting . My relationship with Coach Chaplin had become untenable, and, as I got into the advanced stage of my degree, the course work was becoming more demanding.
However, I was becoming a much more independent scholar, and my reading skills and study habits had improved dramatically since my first semester at WSU.
At the end of the semester, after winning my third NCAA cross-country championship, I was exhausted and decided to head back to Kenya to tie up some loose ends and tend and tend to some personal matters. Before the end of the year, I purchased a 100-acre farm in Molo and married Jennifer Chepkemboi, a Nandi woman I met in Kabirirsang Primary School.”
