Kenya is in the midst of history’s most scattered doping crisis. The social and environmental forces that have produced generations of champions are now fuelling a wave of drug use, with new bans every week threatening the country’s sporting legacy.

The first global sporting star and a revolutionary force in athletics, Paavo Nurmi used the 1924 Paris Olympics as a stage to announce himself as the greatest distance runner of all time. A century on, his five gold medals will return to the French capital ahead of this year’s games as part of a larger exhibit hosted by the Museum of World Athletics.

A meteor fleeting across the distance running sky, Kelvin Kiptum will perhaps be remembered as much for what he could have achieved as for what he did achieve. The marathon world record holder died last week in a tragic car accident, just two months out from his first official attempt at the two-hour barrier. In a country where distance running is a national obsession, Kiptum was their king-in-waiting. His career was as brief as it was astounding, and his death asks one of the biggest “what ifs?” in sporting history.

Perched atop the Great Rift Valley, Iten appears to be just another farming village in Kenya. However, the town is brimming with the best distance running talent in the world and continuously produces champions at a global level. But despite their dominance, the secret to their success remains the point of fierce debate in the athletics world.

The Church of the Sunday Long Run, as it has come to be known, is a holy practice among runners. Read on to find out more about the sacred anvil on which distance running success is shaped.

Nedd Brockmann has just completed the 4000km journey from Perth to Sydney on foot: an epic undertaking that took him 47 days and saw him raise more than $2 million for charity.