Kelvin Kiptum: The tragic loss of the marathon runner who was set to redefine the sport

The Olympic men’s marathon on Saturday will fall almost six months to the day since Kelvin Kiptum died.

He and his coach Gervais Hakizimana were killed in a road traffic accident in Kaptagat, Kenya, on 11 February. Kiptum was 24 and the darling of the marathon world.

It takes a special athlete to stand out among Kenyan marathoners. Kenyan men have set the past six marathon world records. Kenyans account for 32 of the 53 marathons that were run faster than two hours and four minutes. Sixteen Kenyan men have broken that threshold. Marathoners are the country’s sporting export.

Since 1996, Kenyans have taken more men’s Olympic marathon medals (seven) than anyone else, only missing a podium once (in 2004). Kiptum had been expected to take gold.

Samuel Wanjiru’s Olympic record (2hr 06min 32sec) would only have been out of reach because Paris boasts one of the toughest marathon courses seen at a Games, with three big hills in the middle and a combined 436 metres (1,430ft) of climbing.

Kiptum only raced three competitive marathons but will go down as one of the greatest. In December 2022, he ran the fastest debut marathon, winning in Valencia (2:01:53). Kiptum ran a negative split, completing the second half faster than the opening 13.1 miles. With 10km to go, he took off his watch, threw it onto the road, then turned the pace on.

Four months later, Kiptum won in London, his first major marathon victory. He also ran another negative split, which athletes rarely manage because the course starts on a downhill. His time (2:01:23) was the second-fastest ever and only 16 seconds behind Eliud Kipchoge’s world record.

Then came Chicago in October. Kiptum smashed Kipchoge’s world record by 34 seconds and ran another negative split. This was all before his 24th birthday. The marathon landscape was already changing, with carbon-plated shoes, Kipchoge entering his twilight years and the realisation that the sub-two-hour marathon was achievable in real race conditions. Regardless, nobody had seen an athlete like Kiptum.

Those who knew Kiptum, lived around him, raced against him and represented him, say times and records only capture part of his significance. Everyone has a story to tell, and this piece tells a few of those. The Athletic spoke to:

• Marc Corstjens: Kiptum’s athlete representative
• Gabriel Gerald Geay: Tanzanian marathoner who raced three times against Kiptum, including the 2022 Valencia marathon
• Benson Kipruto: Kenyan marathoner, fifth fastest all-time (2:02:16), finished second to Kiptum in 2023 Chicago marathon
• Vivian Cheruiyot: Kenyan distance runner, former Olympic and world champion, training partner of Kiptum
• Yannis Pitsiladis: A researcher and leading expert on east African distance running
• Justin Lagat: An Eldoret-based running coach, journalist and runner
• Muriithi Kariuki: A Nairobi-based journalist for Nation

Marc Corstjens was a constant for Kiptum. They first met, Corstjens estimates, in 2018 or 2019, when he was scouting other top runners in Kenya. Kiptum was a training partner of one of Corstjens’ athletes. They were introduced and the rest is history.

“He developed very well,” says Corstjens. “He took his opportunities. The races that he did, he was always very concentrated. He took it how it came.”

Kiptum had so much success so quickly that Corstjens had to rip up their initial plan. Kiptum went from the support athlete to the top athlete needing support, but stayed grounded.

“I remember the time we walked in the village and he stopped at one of the girls, I think she was 12 or 13 years old. They started talking Swahili, I couldn’t understand them,” says Corstjens. “I asked him: ‘What were you talking about?’. He said: ‘I met her two weeks ago here, during (the) daytime. I asked her: “What are you doing here? Don’t you have to be at school?”.

“’She said: “Yeah, but I’m kicked out because my parents cannot pay the bills”‘. So he went to (the) school, paid the bills, and the girl went back. He supported a few kids in the local community. We knew that it was important for him to help others.”

Gabriel Gerald Geay, who raced Kiptum three times, described Kiptum as “humble with happiness all the time”. Kiptum doesn’t fulfil the stereotype of winners getting arrogant and selfish with success.

Benson Kipruto, who finished second at Kiptum’s world-record marathon in Chicago, says, “He had an aura. Even if he was very introverted and quiet, he also had moments when he would open up and tell a story or make a joke. Those are the things that I will remember best about him.”

“Kelvin was a good person, jovial, an entertainer. He loved everyone regardless of their career and performances,” says Vivian Cheruiyot, one of Kenya’s most successful distance athletes and Kiptum’s former training partner. “The legacy Kelvin left behind in running was that everyone is a champion.”

Muriithi Kariuki, a Nairobi-based journalist, says Kiptum was “widely a hero. His death hit the country hard. There was a huge outpouring of grief across the country”.

Timothy Kiplagat, a close friend and training partner, was particularly hit by grief, and had to be persuaded not to pull out of the Tokyo marathon in March, four weeks after Kiptum’s death.

“He was a once-in-a-lifetime athlete. A bit like Usain Bolt in sprinting,” says Kipruto. “Kelvin helped me push my limits. Like Eliud Kipchoge before him, Kelvin has proven that we should not impose limits on ourselves.”

Corstjens talks about Kiptum as a complete package: “He had a superb racing style, but the body was also strong enough to maintain this high training volume — and that’s a bit exceptional. You need to have the body to do it, then you have to do it. You have to be motivated and concentrated and you have to recover. All these factors that you see with other athletes, who have one or two, Kelvin had all three.”

Kiptum proves that people are products of their environment. As Kariuki explains, “Most of Kenya’s runners, including marathoners, come from the Rift Valley. Running is such a widespread culture within that region. It’s as if nothing else exists.”

The Rift Valley has become mythologised in the running world, particularly concerning the Kalenjin — an umbrella term for a group of 11 Nilotic-speaking tribes indigenous to east Africa. The Nandi, the second-most populous of those tribes, are massively disproportionately over-represented among Kenya’s best distance runners.

The Rift Valley has become mythologised in the running world (Franck Fife/AFP via Getty Images)

Yannis Pitsiladis, the leading expert on east African distance running, is obsessed with understanding why. Pitsiladis co-authored a 2006 study of Kenyan distance runners. The research found that 81 per cent of Kenyan international athletes originated from the Rift Valley, 76 per cent were Kalenjin and 44 per cent specifically were Nandi — compared to an average control population of 20 per cent, eight per cent and five per cent.

Kiptum is Kalenjin, but, Pitsiladis says, “Kelvin was not Nandi, which is quite interesting”. He says that in the early 2000s or 2010s, Kiptum’s talent may not have been spotted, as scouts would, rather crudely, search specifically for Nandi runners.

Pitsiladis uses Kiptum as an example to prove how Kalenjin athletes are not solely reducible to genetics. “The tribal aspect is a red herring,” he says. From his research of DNA testing hundreds of athletes, he “found something nobody was expecting”.

“The different sub-tribes of the common gene were not homogeneous — they were so genetically diverse,” Pitsiladis continues. “This notion of them (Nandi) having superior genetics versus the other sub-tribes made no sense. They were more diverse than me and you (he’s from South Africa, I’m English).”

Celebrating in Chicago after breaking the world record (Michael Reaves/Getty Images)

Pitsiladis, making regular trips to the Rift Valley, offers a nuanced explanation of Kiptum’s route to the top. First, he stresses, “Becoming an elite athlete is a genetic situation. Kiptum had the right genes. They may not be the same genes that made Kenenisa Bekele or Kipchoge, but there will be a panel of genes that make them who they are”.

He has found commonalities among top fast African marathoners: growing up and living at altitude, having a highly active lifestyle, often running to school, running barefoot, eating an “ancestral diet” and logging ridiculous training. “Kelvin had all of them,” says Pitsiladis.

Pitsiladis describes Chepkorio, where Kiptum was born, as being at a “moderate altitude” of around 2,600m. His childhood was spent herding family cattle and running barefoot — he didn’t take up competitive running until his teenage years, which is typical.

“Being barefoot protects the musculoskeletal system against injuries,” says Pitsiladis, who explains that it was not just that he ran but when and how: “running to school, jumping over the streams, over rocks, all of these things. It’s not only running in a straight line or around a track”.

That performance is fuelled by the “ancestral diet”, which Pitsiladis compares to the “carb-loading” approach followed by Westerners to prepare for long-distance races, just done daily. “If you go to Kenya, in rural areas, you eat like an athlete. Very high in carbohydrates: a lot of vegetables, a lot of fruit. Not a lot of meat. But actually the perfect training diet,” says Pitsiladis.

These are pieces of a bigger puzzle. No single factor explains the Kalenjin overrepresentation but collectively, the evidence is overwhelming.

Kiptum was 11 when, in 2011, Kenyan Patrick Makau set the marathon world record in Berlin. That record was broken three times in the following seven years by three Kenyans — Wilson Kipsang, Dennis Kimetto and Kipchoge. Four different Kenyans medalled in the Olympic marathon between 2008 and 2020. Kiptum grew up watching Kenya own the marathon.

Pitsiladis explains the virtuous cycle: “I want to follow my role models who have done well in life. The same applied to Kelvin. He saw Eliud, the likes of Eliud.” Kipchoge, like Bekele, moved up to the marathon after a successful track career. Kiptum was different in going straight to the marathon.

Kiptum was due to run in Rotterdam in April 2024 but died in February (Golazo Group)

If culture can explain Kiptum’s route to the top, his training set him apart. “He ran close to 300km a week, with very long runs in the early morning, hard interval sessions, what they (Kenyans) call, ‘Bone-breaking sessions’,” says Pitsiladis.

That is high, even by elite standards. A 2022 review of studies on the training characteristics of world-class distance runners found athletes cover 160km-220km in the mid-preparation phase for a marathon.

Pitsiladis says this is training “you would never do anywhere else in the world. Why not? Because it doesn’t work, you’d get injured. You wouldn’t be able to do it. If you tried it at altitude, you wouldn’t be able to. But they can because they did from a young age.”

It explains Kiptum’s immense finishes to races. His second 13.1 miles in Valencia was the fastest split (60:15). Then he went 59:45 for the second half of London and 59:47 in Chicago.

Kariuki says, “Watching Kiptum race was an absolute delight. I remember the Valencia marathon. At 1:29, Kiptum goes past the race favourite and world champion Tamirat Tola.” Tola started to wind up after the pacemakers dropped out at 25km. Kiptum slotted in among a lead pack of nine, and waited for his moment.

“For a good 10 minutes, he progressed and built a gap. I had come to the conclusion that Kenya had once again seen the arrival of one of the best marathoners,” says Kariuki. Just after 30km, Kiptum gestures to Tola and Geay to run alongside him and help pace. They don’t. Kiptum takes off his watch and runs away from them.

“What he achieved that memorable day in Chicago was on such a different level, almost superhero,” says Kipruto. “I’m a strong marathoner, but the way he attacked the race and ran from the front, constantly pushing the pace – when it was already high – was just phenomenal.”

WORLD RECORD: We have a new man in town. Kelvin Kiptum just broke Eliud Kipchoge’s World Record with an unofficial time of 2:00:35! UNBELIEVABLE! pic.twitter.com/XfeMEzPveZ

— Chicago Marathon (@ChiMarathon) October 8, 2023

In Chicago, there was another surge at 90 minutes. Until that point, Kiptum was running with Daniel Mateiko, who dropped out at 30km. Nobody could mix it with Kiptum.

The final stages of that race are cinematic: on his own down wide, empty streets. As he gets faster, Kiptum’s distinctive rocking style shows, his arms crossing over his body and shoulders rolling from side to side as he lands. His form was never as efficient or minimal as Kipchoge’s, but it worked. Kiptum ran with a swagger.

People queue to see the Kiptum’s coffin in February (Luis Tato/AFP via Getty Images)

From tragedy comes hope. Corstjens was part of the team, alongside the organisers of the Rotterdam marathon (which Kiptum was due to run in April), to launch the Kelvin Kiptum Foundation. It is a charity that Corstjens says is “for local (running) talents, to help them develop, for local kids to help go to school, for the local community — hopefully immediately, but certainly in the future”.

Gone, but never forgotten. The marathon world will always have Kiptum’s imprint.

Rest in peace, Kelvin.

(Top photos: Getty Images; design: Dan Goldfarb)