Hall of Fame
Samson Kimombwa is a prominent member of the Long Crimson Line: the list of highly accomplished distance runners at WSU that began in the 1970s and either won a Pac-10 and/or NCAA title or scored team points in an NCAA Championships in the 1500m to 10,000m races. Kimombwa, from Kitale, Kenya, earned four varsity letters in both cross country and track at WSU, and accumulated nine All-America certificates along the way. During the 1975-76 school year, his first in Pullman, Kimombwa set the national freshman records for the indoor three-mile (13:23.5), the indoor 5,000m (13:59.8), and the 21k run (1:07:35.6). During the summer of 1977 he ran a total of eight sub-28:30 times for the 10,000m, including two races under 27:40. Most impressive was his 10k time of 27:31.47, a World Record mark, run at the World Games in Helsinki. Kimombwa’s WSU, collegiate and World record time was broken the following year by teammate and fellow Cougar Kenyan Henry Rono. Teammates Rono and Joel Cheruiyot provided Kimombwa with the most competition and the trio are still one-two-three in the school’s all-time 10k list. Kimombwa finished ninth in the balloting for Track & Field News’ 1977 Track and Field Athlete-of-the-Year, and his world record performance that year placed him fourth in the balloting for the best single performance of the year. In Pac-8/10 competition, he won three titles and finished in the top five nine times, while in NCAA competition won one title and finished in the top five eight times.
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