BOSTON -- To John Kagwe, the dominance of Kenyan runners at the Boston Marathon is similar to the hold the United States has on basketball with its Dream Team lineups.
Winners make more winners."It's like Michael Jordan in basketball," said Kagwe, a two-time New York City Marathon champion and one of nine elite Kenyan runners in Monday's field. "The younger ones see how well John Kagwe is doing and they want to be like him.
"Before we came, there were difficulties. There were Kenyans who tried but couldn't make it."
Lately, they've been making it every time they take to the course.
Defending champion Moses Tanui, No. 2 Joseph Chebet and Kagwe will lead the charge for a record-tying ninth consecutive Kenyan title in the world's most prestigious marathon.
The top-flight women's field is led by two-time defending champion Fatuma Roba of Ethiopia, the 1996 Olympic gold medalist, and includes Lynn Jennings, the top American woman distance runner who is making her official marathon debut.
Also running is Bill Rodgers, the four-time Boston winner who is aiming for an American over-50 course record at age 51.
Keith Brantly, a 1996 American Olympic marathoner, calls the current crop of Kenyans "the best distance runners the world has ever seen."
The way the Kenyans are performing these days, there's little argument.
Tanui, who also won the centennial Boston race in 1996, took last year's edition in a career-best 2 hours, 7 minutes, 34 seconds. Chebet was runner-up to Tanui last year at 2:07:37 and the second-place finisher in the past two New York City Marathons. Kagwe has a career-best 2:08:12, while Sammy Korir, the Amsterdam Marathon winner the past two years, has a best of 2:08:02.
Those four will wear starting bids 1, 2, 3 and 5. No. 4 also belonged to a Kenyan, Ondoro Osoro, the world's top-ranked marathoner last year after winning the Chicago Marathon at 2:06:54, the third-fastest in history and the fastest-ever for a first-time runner. But Osoro withdrew because of a hip injury.
Still, Kagwe said this year's run is not a Kenyan lock.
"I don't want it to look like only Kenyans can win," Kagwe said. "I don't want to say that Kenyans are super, that they can't be beaten. Anyone can be a winner if he prepares himself.
"Kenyans think like me. When they go into a race, they don't count themselves as a winner. They go in like they're a contestant. What we can say about Kenya is that we have a lot of big-name runners, like me, who are known throughout the world."
Known as winners, as they have been here since 1991.
That was the year Ibrahim Hussein won the second of his three titles (he was the first Kenyan winner in 1988), and his countrymen haven't lost since.
Hussein won again in 1992. Then Cosmas Ndeti won from 1993-95. In between Tanui's two victories, Lameck Aguta won in 1997.
In each of the past four races, Kenyans finished at least 1-2, taking the first five places and seven of the top eight in 1996.
That kind of monopolization is similar to the period between 1916 and 1925, when Americans won all nine individual Boston races contested, including three by Clarence DeMar (in 1918, there was only team competition).
Last year, Kenyans won nearly every major marathon in the United States -- Tanui at Boston, Kagwe at New York, Osoro at Chicago, Simon Bor at Los Angeles, Philip Tarus at the Rock 'n' Roll Marathon in San Diego and Mbarek Hussein, brother of Ibrahim, at Honolulu.
They also took the first six places and seven of the first 10 at San Diego, the first three at Honolulu, seconds at New York, Boston and Los Angeles, and three of the first five spots at Chicago.
"They are not only slaughtering the Americans, they are slaughtering everybody," Brantley said.
Many of the Kenyan runners live and train in the United States, but their dominance has spread throughout the world, winning three marathons in Japan and one in South Africa last year.