The long run of short-sighted nation: Why Tanzania only runs marathon, little else

DAR ES SALAAM: ON any given weekend in Tanzania, just as the rooster crows and the sun is still stretching itself awake over the Indian Ocean, you can hear the pounding of rubber soles on tarmac.

Marathons and fun runs have become our new national ritual.

From the Kilimanjaro Marathon to the Rock City Run in Mwanza, from the Dar Rotary Dar Marathon to the countless charity races with names longer than the actual courses, we have turned jogging into a social movement.

Corporate logos flutter on vests, water bottles are handed out like communion wine and managers who haven’t run since the days of Form Four exams suddenly rediscover their knees.

Some stagger, some glide, but all of them reach the finish line with the holy trinity of marathon rewards: A medal, a t-shirt and a banana.

It’s a marvellous spectacle and you’d think out of this ocean of enthusiasm some future champions of track and field would emerge.

And yet, here lies the puzzle: Tanzania is content to produce only marathoners. Brave, stoic men of the long haul.

The Juma Ikangaas who broke hearts in Boston but never quite broke the tape, the Gidamis Shahangas who once snatched Moscow gold before everyone remembered the Soviets had banned half the competition and more recently Alphonce Felix Simbu, who did us proud with his 2025 World Championship gold.

Beyond these noble plodders, our contribution to track and field is a polite shrug.

We don’t have sprinters exploding from starting blocks like caffeinated cheetahs.

We don’t have high jumpers contorting themselves over bars, or discus throwers spinning like deranged chefs with frying pans.

Pole vault? Unless you count goats in Kilimanjaro clearing fences, we’ve nothing.

Hammer throw? Maybe the mama in Kariakoo market who can lob a coconut with deadly accuracy, but she’s unlikely to qualify for Paris 2028.

We are, in short, a marathon nation — single-minded, stubborn and oddly blinkered. Part of the answer is that marathons are everywhere.

They sprout like mushrooms after the rain. Banks, breweries, telcos, NGOs, even insurance companies with the humourless air of funeral parlours now sponsor them.

They are cheap to organise find a road, beg the police to stop traffic, put up some kilometre markers and hire a DJ with questionable taste in Bongo Flava remixes.

Compare that with the complicated apparatus of track and field — mats for high jump, cages for hammer throw, landing pits for long jump, trained officials who actually know the difference between a foul and a record.

It all sounds expensive and vaguely German. Far easier to send people running round the streets and call it a day.

And there is the cultural side. Tanzanians walk. We walk to school, to church, to market, to work. Our legs are conditioned from childhood.

The myth has been written into East African DNA: Lean bodies, high altitudes, endurance for days.

So, when it comes to athletics, the default assumption is of course we run far.

The sprinters? Leave them to Jamaica. The shot putters? That’s Poland’s business. The pole vaulters? Honestly, who came up with that idea in the first place?

But what makes this marathon obsession slightly tragicomic is the wasted potential.

Attend any of these weekend fun runs and look carefully at the early pack. You’ll notice wiry lads with explosive bursts who would make fine 100 metre men if only someone handed them spikes instead of free t-shirts.

You’ll spot football-playing girls who jump fences like gazelles, natural high jumpers in disguise.

You’ll even see Maasai boys who throw their water bottles further than most Europeans fling javelins.

And yet, there’s no system to channel this raw talent into other disciplines.

The marathon swallows everything. It has become the one-size-fits-all funnel of Tanzanian athletics.

History has done its bit as well.

Our heroes were distance men. Ikangaa, Shahanga, Bayi in the 1500 metres — these were the voices you heard on Radio Tanzania, the names that echoed through households.

A child doesn’t dream of throwing a hammer when all the glory is in the marathon.

And so, generation after generation, the pattern repeats. Coaches look for lungs, not muscle twitch. The rest of track and field lies abandoned, like dusty instruments in a forgotten orchestra pit.

Lurking in the background, of course, is the National Sports Council (NSC), whose very job is to make sure athletics isn’t reduced to a one-note song.

By law, NSC is supposed to play a central role in developing, promoting and controlling amateur sport in the country.

It is meant to provide resources, build infrastructure, and train athletes. It should be approving competitions, stimulating interest in sport at all levels, ensuring funds are used properly and fostering co-operation among associations.

The Act even says so. The Act is very clear. But in practice? The NSC seems to specialise in two things: Receiving returning marathoners at airports with bouquets of roses and practising the noble art of sitting behind desks.

Supervision of sports officers scattered across Tanzania is reduced to stamping licences and issuing bureaucracy.

It is an office that measures its success not in medals or training programmes but in the thickness of its files.

Innovation? None. Creativity? Missing. Responsibility? Subcontracted to the athletes themselves.

The Council’s greatest muscle seems to be the handshake, flexed at Julius Nyerere International Airport when Simbu comes home.

ALSO READ: Tanzania’s forgotten finish line: From Bayi to Simbu, where did we lose the plot?

The problem with this lack of imagination is that it shackles our sporting identity.

Athletics is a banquet, with dozens of dishes on the table, and we keep showing up with only ugali. Filling, yes. Dependable, certainly. But hardly the full feast.

At every Olympics, medals are won in sprints, jumps, throws and combined events.

By sticking to marathons, we restrict ourselves not only to fewer chances of glory but to a monotonous national flavour.

We tell young athletes: This is the only road you may run. We deprive ourselves of the joy of variety.

Imagine the crowd’s gasp at a Tanzanian pole vaulter soaring over six metres, or the roar when a javelin arcs high above the stadium lights.

Instead, we clap politely for the marathon finish line and go home. And yet, the solution stares us in the face.

These corporate marathons that already draw crowds, sponsors, media attention — why not use them as incubators?

Alongside the 10km run, put on a 100m dash for school kids, a long jump pit, a javelin exhibition.

Let the same sponsors plaster their banners. Let the same cameras broadcast the sprints. Talent would emerge in a heartbeat.

From there, all it would take is a modest investment: a few regional athletics centres, a handful of trained coaches and some equipment that doesn’t look like it was borrowed from a 1950s PE lesson.

We also need to rewrite the narrative.

Celebrate not only the men who can run for two hours without fainting, but the ones who can leap, throw and sprint.

Give them headlines, put them on posters, make them heroes. Narratives feed dreams and dreams feed medal tables.

Jamaica didn’t become Jamaica by accident — they turned sprinters into gods.

Kenya didn’t dominate the steeplechase by luck — they nurtured it like a national flower.

Tanzania could do the same with a handful of other events if it simply stopped being so stubbornly loyal to the marathon, and if the National Sports Council took its job as seriously as it takes its airport receptions.

For now, though, we remain the guest at the global sporting party who only ever brings one dish.

Tasty, hearty, respectable — but repetitive.

Everyone else is feasting on variety, and we’re there with another plate of marathon ugali. We love it, it fills us, it gives us a seat at the table, but it doesn’t make for much conversation.

Perhaps, one day, when a Tanzanian triple jumper lands in the sandpit at seventeen metres, or a sprinter from Singida blazes under ten seconds, the world will laugh at how long we confined ourselves to one lane.

Until then, we will keep jogging faithfully through our weekend bonanzas, bananas in hand, medals around our necks.

And forever remain a nation of long-distance dreamers whose officials sit behind desks instead of building fields, content with bureaucracy while the real sport slips by.