Since being catapulted into athletics by the need to represent his company (department) during the Armed Forces championship in 1983, where he competed against polished athletes of the time, Coach Francis Kamau remains the unsung hero who has seen all the ugly and bright sides of the sport. 

Kamau, popularly known as Esmi or Master in athletics circles, has seen some of his athletes rise to be wealthy from earnings in the sport and slide back to extreme poverty after misusing their hard-earned money. 

He remembers some of the disturbing incidents like they happened yesterday. One case is where one of his runners built a palatial house in Thika town after making a lot of money in athletics but ended up committing suicide after sliding back to worse poverty than he was before becoming an elite athlete. 

“Before his breakthrough in athletics, he used to read the Bible a lot daily at the camp. But when he made a lot of money, his life changed, living a fast lane lifestyle and even building a big house that was admired by all in Thika,” Kamau said. 

Kamau, a Level Two coaching certificate holder, established the Esmi (Elite Sport Management International) Athletics Club in 1999 after quitting the army.

First, the Club was based in Kinangop in the then Nyandarua district and now Nyandarua County, but later moved its base to Nyahururu, where it has remained since. 

Among athletes who were initial members of the club include Charles Kamathi who shot to fame in 2001 after beating Ethiopian Haile Gabrsellasie in 10,000 metres at that year’s World Championships in Edmonton, Canada.  The Ethiopian had gone for several years without losing any 10,000-metre race.

Currently, Kamathi is a senior police officer. 

He also coached Leonard Mucheru who changed his allegiance to Bahrain but ran into problems with that Middle East country after racing Tiberias Marathon in Israel without authority from his adopted country.

He was stripped of his Bahraini citizenship and returned to his Limuru home in Kiambu. 

Other runners in the early days of Esmi Club were Gabriel Muchiri, a Kenyan team in the 1999 World Championships in Seville, Spain, Shadrack Koskei, Elkana Angwenyi, a bronze medalist in 1500m at the 2006 World Indoor championships, Ann Karindi and Geoffrey Rono.

Later, he handled such athletes like the late Samuel Kamau Wanjiru, who won Kenya’s first Olympic marathon gold, Monica Ngige, Mary Kuria, Ann Gatheru, Mary Wacera, Emmanuel Kiprop and Stanley Waithaka, who won silver in 10,000m during the World Championships held in Eugene, Oregon 2022. 

During his long association with athletics, he has worked with several managers. He describes how stressful life can be for a coach if you work with a manager who is not honest when handling runners’ earnings from competitions. 

He recalls the many times he had to seek help from then Athletics Kenya Secretary General David Okeyo to have a runner paid dues wrongly held by a crafty manager. 

“Okeyo would telephone the manager and order him to release the runner’s money immediately and they would comply,” he said. 

During his many years of athletics, Kamau has endured challenges. He remembers an incident where he and his manager Hussen Makke were finding it challenging to sign then rising 5000 metres star Mercy Cherono. 

With two managers seeking to sign Cherono, the parents of the athlete could not make up their mind on with which manager their daughter should be contracted to. 

Kamau travelled by public means from Nairobi to Bomet at night to be at the door of Cherono’s parents’ home at 6 am, armed with a bag full of sports goods and some money. 

“On finding me knocking on their door that early, the parents had no choice but to allow me to sign their daughter,” he said. 

In 1993 Kamau was catapulted to the mucky and intrigues that characterise doping cases.

He was a star defence witness in a doping case facing the five-time World Cross Country winner and 1988 Seoul (Korea) Olympic 5000 metres gold medalist John Ngugi. 

Ngugi was accused of refusing to submit to of competition drug test when a testing team visited him in Nyahururu. Kamau became a witness because he was present when the anti-doping team arrived to test Ngugi. 

Ngugi was slapped with a four-year ban for the offence, and that marked the end of his stellar running career.  

Ngugi and his manager, Briton John Bicourt contested the ban and after being in the cold for two years, Ngugi was allowed to compete again after the IAAF reviewed the ban and concluded that the runner was not well informed about the 1992 procedure and had difficulty understanding instructions given to him in English at the time.  

None of Kamau’s seven children has pursued a career in athletics to elite level.