
When competition became stiff and fierce, some Kenyan athletes opted to change nationality for a chance to compete at the highest level – Olympics, World Athletics Championships or Commonwealth Games, among others.
Athletics in Kenya is money-minter and unlike other individual sports those lucky to have a chance to run at international level are guaranteed a lifetime fortune. The scramble for placement in the national athletics team has become murderous.
In Kenya’s Rift Valley region where long distance running is a religion, the fierce competition for the ticket to run for the Kenya has fuelled rivalry that verges on criminality.
Initially, athletes who wanted to have an edge over their rivals would resort to doping. However, for the past 10 years or so, no fewer than 60 athletes have been found culpable and handed bans from international circuits.
Criminalisation of doping followed by stringent enforcement of the law by Athletics Kenya for International Athletics Association, seems to be feeding jealousy and the victims of jealousy have been predictably women who are running at the highest level and gradually eclipsing men. Men were until about five years ago were assured to medals and huge earnings for their stellar performances on international tracks.
While there is no empirical evidence to link jealousy to murder of female athletes, there sufficient evidence to demonstrate that the killings are done the athletics community – the Kalenjin.
The latest victim is Rebecca Cheptegei a Ugandan national with roots in Kenya, where she had even acquired land and built a house with proceeds from her earnings from athletics.
Olympic runner Cheptegei’s horrific death after being doused with petrol and set on fire by her boyfriend has again brought to the fore Kenya’s harrowing history of domestic violence against female athletes.
Her killing follows the deaths of at least two other high-profile female runners in cases of domestic violence in the last three years in a region that has produced dozens of Olympic and world champions.
What happened to Cheptegei?
Cheptegei, who was from Uganda, died on Thursday at age 33. Police say Cheptegei’s boyfriend poured a can of petrol over her and set her on fire during a dispute on Sunday. She suffered 80 per cent burns on her body and died in a hospital in the town of Eldoret four days later.
The boyfriend was also burned in the attack and is being treated at the same hospital. No criminal charges have yet been announced against him.
Cheptegei competed in the women’s marathon at the Paris Olympics less than a month ago, finishing in 44th place. She lived in western Kenya’s famous high-altitude training region that draws the best distance runners from across the world and had recently built a house there to be close to the training centers.
Agnes Tirop
The brutal slaying of Kenyan star runner Tirop in the same region in 2021 led to an outpouring of anger from fellow athletes and prompted the East African country’s athletics authorities to acknowledge the scourge of domestic abuse as a major problem.
Tirop was one of Kenya’s brightest talents when she was stabbed to death at her home in Iten, the other world-renowned distance-running training town in Kenya, alongside Eldoret. Her husband, who was on the run, was arrested days after the killing and has been charged with murder. His court case is still underway.
Like Cheptegei, the 25-year-old Tirop had just competed at an Olympics – the 2021 Tokyo Games – and had set a new world record in the 10-kilometer road race in another competition a month before she was killed. Her body was found with stab wounds to the stomach and neck, as well as blunt trauma injury to her head.
In the weeks after Tirop’s death, current and former male and female athletes, spoke out over what they said was a long-running problem of domestic abuse against female athletes in the region. Some marched through the streets of Iten to demand better protection for female athletes and stricter laws against abusers.
Other Kenyan athletes like Ruth Bosibori, a former African champion in the steeplechase, and Joan Chelimo, a marathon runner, said Tirop’s killing had emboldened them to talk about their own abusive relationships.
Both said they had escaped violent partners that made them fear for their lives.
Damaris Muthee
Just six months after Tirop, another runner was killed. Kenyan-born Muthee, who competed for Bahrain, was found dead in a house in Iten after being strangled. Her decomposing body had been there for days before it was found, authorities said at the time.
A male Ethiopian runner with whom she was in a relationship was charged with murder. Muthee, who was 28, had a young child from another relationship.
The cases of domestic abuse in Kenya’s running community are set against the country’s overriding high rates of violence against women, which has prompted marches by ordinary citizens in towns and cities this year.
Activists say successful female athletes may be especially vulnerable in instances when their partners want to control their money and assets in an impoverished region and the women refuse and push back.
Police said Cheptegei was killed in a dispute with her boyfriend over the land she had just built a house on.
Samuel Wanjiru
One of Kenya’s best male athletes also died in what authorities said was a domestic dispute in 2011. Wanjiru was 24 and at the time the reigning Olympic marathon champion. He fell to his death from a balcony at his home during an argument with his wife.
He had been arrested a year earlier and questioned by police for allegedly threatening to kill his wife with an assault rifle. He denied the allegations.
Although Kenyan authorities ruled Wanjiru died after falling or jumping from the balcony, his family claimed that he was killed.
- An AP report