Athletics/ Kenyan stars in crisis: Jean-Christophe Colinof l'Équipevisits the Rift Valley and finds devastation among the running elite: homes gone, villages divided, and Olympic ambitions subordinated to personal survival.

Usually, it's a road brimming with life. Crammed with trucks, matatous and bicycles, an exemplar of the teeming ebullience of African thoroughfares. But at the day's end, an eerie silence hangs over the ribbon of tarmac running between Eldoret and Nabkoi in the west of Kenya.

The Toyota glides effortlessly over the high plains that are home to most of the world's leading distance runners. On the back seat, Paul, a younger brother of the world 3,000 metres record-holder, Daniel Komen, surveys the landscape, his face a worried frown. By his side, Philip Birech, a promising athlete in the group trained by Martin Lel, winner of the 2007 London and New York marathons, huddles in his seat. Mechanically, he turns the pages of the Daily Nation, sadly packed with stories about the spate of inter-ethnic violence that has cost nearly 700 lives and made 260,000 homeless since late December.

Paul and Philip belong to the Kalenjin ethnic group, as do most of the athletes and inhabitants of the Rift Valley.

At the end of a straight stretch in the road we can make out the Kikuyu village of Burnt Forest. Since the outbreak of violence, the roads have been barricaded, cars stopped and passengers checked. Those who don't reply in Kalenjin (or in Kikuyu if it's a Kikuyu barricade) are immediately lynched. So naturally, when the vehicle enters the village, all the occupants are holding their breath. The car slows. In the distance, a group of Kikuyus are advancing up the road. They seem to be forming a barricade. Panic stirs. "If they stop us, they'll kill us," says Paul.

The group of men seem to hesitate, but eventually they disperse and let the car through. Paul had been hiding all his identification documents to keep the fact he was Kalenjin secret. Put there had been no need. Not here. Not this time. "Fear has penetrated us," says Moses Kiptanui, three-time 3,000 metres steeplechase world champion, and now a businessman and trainer in Eldoret. "We won't be able to get rid of it. Every day I fear for my life, for the lives of my family and friends. We don't trust the Kikuyus anymore, even through they were our friends up until very recently. And it's the same with them . . ."

Paul and Philip have just looked death in the eye. Burnt Forest had doubtless burned long enough. The small town bore the brunt of late December's violence. It's here, up in the hills, that Paul, the town's only runner, goes through his training schedule. The view from the high plains overlooking Eldoret was breathtakingly beautiful. But today, all you can see is scorched earth, devastated homes, ash and bone.

Philip grew up in these hills. Life was hard, but at least there was peace between Kikuyus and Kalenjins. Back home for the first time since the conflict started, he puts on a tracksuit and jogs for a while across the ashes of what was once a certain idea of Kenya: a stable country with an average annual growth rate of six per cent; a land of tourist safaris, of elegant, slender athletes, and of ethnic groups who, though there had been some clashes in the past, lived in apparent harmony. And then, within the space of a few minutes, everything changed.

ON DECEMBER 30th, it was announced that the president, the Kikuyu Mwai Kibaki, had been re-elected, a shock result in view of the fact he had been trailing badly in the polls to his rival, Raila Odinga, who enjoyed substantial Kalenjin support.

"A few days before the announcement, I could never have imagined such a result," says Alfred Kirwa Yego, the reigning world 800 metres champion.

"We were living side by side, we were brothers, friends, neighbours," says Moses Tanui, 10,000 metres world champion in 1991.

It had just gone 5pm when the Rift Valley caught fire. "We were watching TV when Kibaki's re-election was announced," says the young athlete Kipchumba Koiwas, who runs for Qatar and lives just outside Eldoret on the road to the university, which is still closed. "We went outside. People were incredibly angry with the Kikuyus, the tribe the president belongs to. In the distance, we saw a horde of youths armed with machetes. My neighbours, the people I grew up with, are Kikuyus. They left without taking anything with them, not even their documents. I ran inside to look for a traditional 'calebasse' which we, the Kalenjins, keep milk in. I put it outside my house to show that we were Kalenjins. A lot of us did that. They destroyed my neighbour's house before going off to burn down other people's."

Until the outbreak of violence, Luke Kibet, winner of the marathon at the World Championships in Osaka last August, had been living a peaceable life in a house on the same road. On December 31st, the second day of the rioting, Luke went into the town. On the main road leading to downtown Eldoret, he saw hundreds of Kikuyus fighting with Kalenjins. It was a scene from a civil war. He saw a man who had been shot and started looking for an ambulance. But before he knew it, he had been hit on the head with a stone.

"He was lying on the ground, but I managed to get him home," explains his friend Jairus Abuka.

Luke recalls: "When I came round, I called the police and asked them to take me to the hospital. It was horrific there, scenes that I'll never be able to forget, people with no arms, no legs, people who had been ripped apart . . . They didn't know where to put them. I even saw a Kikuyu and a Kalenjin in the same bed."

After he had received treatment, Luke went straight back home. Traumatised by his experience, he no longer goes anywhere without his assault rifle, a HKG3.

Lucas Sang was murdered just a little farther up the road. Lucas won a bronze medal in the 4x400 metres at the Seoul Olympics in 1988. But there was much more to his CV than that. Former director of athletics in the region, Lucas worked for other people, for children, for the poor. He was an important man in this beautiful and desolate part of the Rift Valley. The circumstances of his death throw light onto the kind of man he was.

On December 31th, some Kikuyu friends called him, a Kalenjin, because they were being attacked by members of his tribe. He immediately drove to their house to help. But on the way he was stopped at a Kikuyu barricade. He tried to run. He was chased over the hills and tracks he knew so well from his training. But, Lucas, "The Hare", who had once been a regular feature at big meets around Europe, was destined to lose his last race. He tripped and fell. "Since I had not heard from him, I went to look for him," says his friend Moses Tanui. "After a few hours, I found his body. It was covered in machete scars. They had set light to him."

Everyone went to the funeral at Saint Theresia: 5,000 people, among them world champions and Olympic medallists. The president of the Kenyan Olympic Committee, Kipchoge Keino, 1,500 metres champion in Mexico City in 1968, and steeplechase gold medallist in Munich 1972, delivered a long speech, imploring the crowd to come to their senses, to regain their calm.

Not far from his house, 35 Kikuyus were burned alive in the church at Kiambaa. A legendary figure of his country's athletics, Keino talked about a united Kenya, a nation of fraternity and peace. But does it still exist? Among the crowd surrounding Lucas Sang's coffin, at least one man thought not.

That man was Stephen Cherono, 3,000 metres steeplechase world record-holder, who now runs for Qatar under the name Shaheen. "When you attack Kalenjins," he says quietly, "you cannot take refuge in a church . . . At that point, it's just another building. Nothing more."

While Keino appeals to the light of reason, Shaheen predicts dark days ahead: "It won't stop there. The Kalenjins are warriors, they will become more and more violent . . . In the forests, people are making weapons . . . arrows, the heads of which are coated with a poison that kills in under three minutes."

KAPSABET, around 25 miles southeast of Eldoret, is another renowned centre of athletics - and another theatre of anti-Kikuyu violence. The town has been wrecked, with Kikuyu shops burned to a cinder. One hairdressing salon run by an old lady is no more.

"She was my hairdresser," says Janeth Jepkosgei, 800 metres world champion. "I don't know where she is now."

As more and more Kikuyus leave town, fleeing for their lives, the situation increasingly resembles a process of ethnic cleansing. Kikuyus do not live among the Kalenjins anymore. Except, perhaps, in villages like Burnt Forest, where the two communities keep a guarded distance and, in the shadows thrown by their baked-earth houses, busy themselves making arrows and rifles and sharpening their machetes.

Most have fled to Nakuru, a largely Kikuyu province in the south-east.

The others were taken by police convoy to an immense camp at Eldoret's south-east exit, where the agricultural market is usually held.

"This town used to be a world-famous centre of athletics excellence; now it's world famous for its massacres," says John Njoroge (35), who lost everything in an instant. His future lies in ruins, as does that of Anthony, a Kikuyu orphan rejected by his adoptive Kalenjin parents.

The "refugees" have come from all around the region. From Iten, for example, 20 miles east of Eldoret. This small town nestling under the cliffs overlooking the Rift Valley, 2,500 metres above sea-level, hosts numerous training camps. Every day during his morning sessions, Shaheen went by the house - which has since been burned to the ground - of Jason Ndungu, a Kikuyu bricklayer. Bob Tahri, who trained for a while here, probably took the same route.

"No athlete was involved in these massacres," says Jason. Dignified, uncomplaining and free of hate, he comments: "And even if they are Kalenjins, I'm still proud of them and I would be happy for a runner from Iten to win the Olympic gold medal. Yes, I really hope that Shaheen wins gold."

The few Kikuyu athletes who trained here have gone back to their families in the regions - to the south, toward Nakura - where their tribe is in the majority. Most of them had gone there for Christmas and have not returned to the Rift Valley. Jason Nbote, winner of last year's Seoul Marathon in a record two hours, seven minutes and 51 seconds, used to live in Iten.

"When they came to burn down my house, my Kalenjin neighbours said that it belonged to my wife. So they went away. But I have nothing."

His wife, Flomena, winner of the Berlin 25k race, is a Kalenjin. They got married in Iten in 2002. They have a child, Samy.

Flomena smiles when asked what tribe her son belongs to. Her future is linked to that of her Kikuyu husband. They have found refuge with his family, somewhere east of Nakuru, at the end of a hazardous stone track, almost inaccessible by car. They have no material goods and nowhere to train.

"We jog around the house, but we can't go on like that."

How long will their nomadic wanderings last?

"It's going to take time," Jason and Flomena reply. They agree with the sentiments expressed by Shaheen: "The Kikuyus won't be back. They came to live on our land, but they didn't respect us . . ."

Many athletes would like to believe Kenya's politicians will find a solution to the situation, end the cycle of violence. But Kiptanui is pessimistic.

"We have created hatred between the two peoples," he says. "There will always be something that brings us back to this tragedy. It's like a poison that has seeped into our hearts. The children will always remember the parents they lost . . ."

BUT LIFE MUST GO ON. For athletes, important deadlines are coming up fast. After two weeks without training, they are champing at the bit. Like Martin Lel, many are now training whenever there are calms in the storm of violence that has engulfed the country.

"First, a group of us do laps of the house," he says, "then we run in the tea plantation that we used to use all the time."

The 800 metres world champion Alfred Kirwa Yego says: "Psychologically, it's difficult to do normal training sessions."

And Janeth Jepkosgei comments, "Personally, I find it difficult to run, with the memories of everything I've seen."

Those images are of burned houses and mutilated bodies in a divided country still a prey to outbreaks of insane violence.

On March 30th, however, Kikuyus and Kalenjins will have to run together at the World Cross-Country Championships in Edinburgh.

"It will all go smoothly," says Issac Songok, who is set to compete in the event. "There are no problems between us."

Kiptanui agrees. To a certain extent: "It's true. But people have changed. Before everything that's happened, I saw myself as a Kenyan, not as a Kalenjin. But now I've been forced to focus on my community."

"This feeling of belonging is stronger than anything else," explains Brother Colm O'Connell, the retired headmaster of Iten Secondary School who arrived here from Ireland in 1976. "As soon as someone belonging to your tribe is attacked in some way, it goes beyond any personal relationship. That's why some people have actually started to fight with neighbours."

Brother Colm set up Kenya's first training camp in Iten. In the past few days, he started training sessions with his athletes again. He has been deeply affected by the violence but says, "In spite of everything, I won't leave the country. Kenya is my home."

Behind Brother Colm we can see the Rift Valley, that glorious geological fault that separates Africa into two, from the Cape of Good Hope to the Red Sea. It was along this immense gouge in the rock that men first stood upright and began to walk. And to run. And to kill each other.