'Every medal has two sides'

In this thesis the author wants to give an answer to the question ‘What’s the role of ‘the West’ on Kenyan athletics?’. In order to accomplish this, the author conducts his research at the level of Kenya’s national culture, the national athletic system, and the individual athlete. Three concepts, which he derives from theories, described in the theoretical framework, are applied to the different levels of research. The three concepts are the transition-concept, the growth-concept (based on modernization theory) and the empowerment-concept (based on dependency-theory). In the empirical part of the thesis these three concepts are tested in the case of Kenyan athletics.