Marathon world record-holder Kelvin Kiptum, who was set to be a superstar of long-distance running, was killed along with his coach in a car crash in Kenya late Sunday. Kiptum was 24 and had the world record he set last year at the Chicago Marathon ratified by international track federation World Athletics just last week. (More Sports News)
Kiptum, who was Kenyan, and his Rwandan coach Gervais Hakizimana were killed in the crash at around 11 p.m. Another Kenyan athlete, Milcah Chemos, confirmed their deaths to The Associated Press. She was at the hospital mortuary where the bodies were taken and had seen Kiptum’s body, she said.
Mourning the loss of a great athlete, president of World Athletics Sebastian Coe, said Kiptum was "an incredible athlete leaving an incredible legacy, we will miss him dearly".
“We are shocked and deeply saddened to learn of the devastating loss of Kelvin Kiptum and his coach, Gervais Hakizimana,” Coe wrote. “On behalf of all World Athletics we send our deepest condolences to their families, friends, teammates and the Kenyan nation.”
“It was only earlier this week in Chicago, the place where Kelvin set his extraordinary marathon World Record, that I was able to officially ratify his historic time. An incredible athlete leaving an incredible legacy, we will miss him dearly,” Coe wrote.
David Rudisha, Kenya’s two-time Olympic champion in the 800 meters, wrote on X that he was shocked and deeply saddened by the news. “This is a huge loss,” Rudisha wrote.
Kiptum was an emerging talent and was among the new crop of Kenyan athletes who started their careers on the road, breaking the previous tradition of athletes who start their career on the track and then switiching on to marathons.
Kiptum came from a poor background wherein he could not afford to buy his own running shoes and in his first competitive race, he had to borrow from someone else.
Kiptum was the first man to run the marathon in under 2 hours, 1 minute in an official race when he set the world record of 2:00.35 in Chicago in October, beating the mark of fellow Kenyan and marathon great Eliud Kipchoge.
Speaking about Kiptum's coach Hakizimana, 36, was a retired Rwandese runner and helped the Kenayan target the world record.
"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.
"Now, I am grateful to him for his achievement," Kiptum said on his coach as quoted in the BBC.
(With AP inputs)
