The Mexico City Olympics and the image of altitude's influence on the success of Kenyan athletes

Taking place at an altitude of 2,200 metres, the 1968 Olympic Games marked both the advent of Kenyan athletes on the world middle-distance running scene and the emergence of representations of the advantages that the altitude at which they lived would confer on them. These Games remain closely associated with the image of Kenyan athletes as bearers of a fantasised advantage linked to the natural environment in which they evolve. This representation reflects a French media construction that tends to devalue these athletes in a subordinate position in a sports space that is a vector of discrimination. The study is based on the analysis of works on athletics in Kenya published in France, written by journalists, athletes or coaches and of the specialized French press through the issues of Le Miroir de l'athlétisme, l'Équipe athlétisme magazine, VO2 Magazine and l'Athlétisme. The various observers took advantage of the geographical singularity of the Olympic site in Mexico City to euphemise, if not discredit, the Kenyan hegemony in the long races. This was due as much to their difficulty in separating themselves from a racialist vision of sporting performance as to a desire to preserve the faltering lustre of the French middle distance. Although controversial, the image of the influence of altitude brought to light at the Mexico Games has endured to the present day, despite the involvement of scientists to shed light on this phenomenon.