Man doesn’t monkey around with his passion

In the suburbs of Tokyo lives Kenichi Ito, the world’s fastest man

on four “legs”.

For nearly a decade, the 29-year-old Ito, long a fan of simians, has been perfecting a running style

based on the wiry Patas monkey of Africa, winning a spot in Guinness World Records in the process.

“You know, my face

and body kind of look like a monkey, so from a young age every-body used to tease me, saying ‘monkey, monkey’,” Ito said in

his neat apartment, sitting in front of a large poster of a chimpanzee.

“But I wasn’t really bothered because I

really liked them, and somewhere inside of me I had this ambition to adopt one of their traits. When I saw a monkey that

could run fast, I knew I’d found it – and from that point on I practised running like a monkey every day.”

For eight

years the slender Ito has walked around his neighbourhood on his hands and feet, wearing gloves and cleated shoes. He has

turned his house-hold chores into challenges on all fours and squats like a monkey while talking.

Constantly honing

his style, he looks for inspiration from across the animal world by using the Internet and a season ticket to the local

zoo.

So far he’s developed six distinct forms of all-fours movement, from his top-speed “gal-lop” to a more leisurely

walking pace. His speed at running 100 metres on all fours, just under 20 seconds, won him a Guinness

record.

Occasionally Ito, who survives on money earned through his running as well as part-time jobs, gets together

with fellow four-legged running fanatics to race each other. Sometimes, they bring cats and dogs to join in the fun – though

a well-trained dog will usually win.

Ito believes so fervently in his form of “sport” that he is convinced athletes of

the future will eventually come around to his point of view.

“Certainly four-legged running isn’t an Olympic sport

yet, but my prediction is that in 500 years’ time all track athletes will be running on all fours,” he said.

But his

passion for simians has not been without setbacks.

“In the streets around here I get stopped by the police, so I went

up into the mountains for about a month for a kind of four-legged training camp,” Ito said. “But on the first day, a hunter

mistook me for a wild boar, and he tried to shoot me.”