Who was Kiptum?
Kiptum and his Rwandan coach Gervais Hakizimana were killed on 11th Feb 2024 in the crash at around 11 p.m., said Kenyan runner Milcah Chemos, who was at the hospital where the bodies were taken. The tragic incident happened while traveling in a car on a road in western Kenya on Sunday.
His father Samson Cheruiyot was broken and devastated.
“Kiptum was my only child, now he’s left me,” he told Kenya’s Citizen TV. “I don’t know what to say, I see his children will be looking to me, and my child is gone… Now, who will help us raise his kids?”
The Kenyan was a long-distance runner and the marathon world record holder at the time of his death. Also, he is the only person in history to run the marathon in less than two hours and one minute in a record-eligible race. What a superb athlete he was !
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Kiptum was married to Asenath Cheruto Rotich and, together, they had two children.
While reacting to the news of his death, Kenyan Sports Minister Ababu Namwamba wrote on X:
Devastatingly sickening!! Kenya has lost a special gem. Lost for words.. pic.twitter.com/URgLeeop1t
— Hon Ababu-Namwamba, EGH🇰🇪 (@AbabuNamwamba) February 11, 2024
Kenyan President William Ruto stated: “Kelvin Kiptum was a star. Arguably one of the world’s finest sportsmen who broke barriers to secure a marathon record.
Kiptum’s coach, Hakizimana, 36, was a retired Rwandan runner. “I knew him when he was a little boy, herding livestock barefooted,” Hakizimana recalled last year. “It was in 2009, I was training near his father’s farm, he’d come kicking at my heels and I would chase him away.
