Accompanied by songs, or in respectful silence, the coffin, surrounded by flowers, of the great hope of Kenyan athletics Kelvin Kiptum, who died at the age of 24, circulated aboard a hearse during a procession through the streets of ‘Eldoret, a mecca for running in the Rift Valley (west). The athlete’s father and mother, Samson Cheruiyot and Mary Kangongo, arrived in tears near the coffin, before the procession began. “My heart is still so heavy. The whole family is going through a (…) sad moment,” the marathon runner’s uncle, Philip Kiplagat, told AFP, while paying tribute to a “great man, someone we can count on”.
Kiptum’s coffin then headed to Iten, a famous training center for long-distance and middle-distance runners, where dozens of people signed a book of condolences. “What Kelvin achieved was extraordinary. To have reached such heights at such a young age is already almost unique,” said International Athletics Federation President Sebastian Coe, himself a former athlete, who arrived in Eldoret on Thursday to take part in the ceremony. He also lamented the loss of “a still extraordinarily young life.” A mass was then celebrated in Chepkorio, about forty kilometers from Eldoret.
Kelvin Kiptum, married and father of two children, will be buried on Friday during a “national funeral” which will take place in Naiberi in the presence of President William Ruto and Sebastian Coe. “He leaves a big void in Kenyan athletics and it will take time to fill it,” the head of the youth program at the Kenyan Athletics Federation, Barnaba Korir, told AFP. Paul Ouma, a shoeshine boy who is not working to attend the two-kilometer procession, tells AFP that this disappearance is “very painful”. “We expected a lot from him,” he says.
Favorite of the Paris Olympic Games, Kelvin Kiptum was killed on the night of Sunday February 11 to Monday 12 after leaving the road in the locality of Kaptagat, in the Rift Valley, not far from his place of residence and training. His trainer, Rwandan Gervais Hakizimana, 36, also on board, was also killed instantly. According to a forensic doctor, Kelvin Kiptum, whose toxicological analyzes are still in progress, died following serious head injuries.
Considered the rising star of Kenyan and world athletics, Kiptum made a thunderous entry into the world of marathons by breaking the world record (2:00:35) in his third official race, in Chicago last October. sec) held by the legend of the discipline, his compatriot Eliud Kipchoge. The image will remain that of a slender athlete (1.78 m, 59 kg), flying with a powerful stride on the Chicago asphalt, even accelerating in the second half of the race, where most marathon runners of all levels falter. . He announced that he would attempt to become the first man to run an official marathon under the symbolic two-hour mark in Rotterdam on April 14.
Kiptum started running regularly in 2016. In 2019, he managed two very fast half marathons in two weeks (60:48 in Copenhagen then 59:53 in Belfort, France), when Gervais Hakizimana offered to coach him for the marathon, their collaboration taking off during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. A training convict, Kiptum regularly ran more than 250 kilometers per week, and sometimes more than 300, rare figures even at a very high level, assured his trainer , a French resident and national level runner who had met Kiptum during his training stays in Kenya. Hakizimana was buried in Rwanda on Wednesday.
