The locals approached the site of the tragedy, the exact point where the history of athletics changed forever. With long faces, some with tears, the crowd gathered around a mass of iron, what remained of the car where Kelvin Kiptum lost his life, along with his coach Gervais Hakizimana, after leaving the road, crashing into a tree and fall into a ditch. Many of those who saw the marathon world record holder (2h00m35s) training on those roads, near his hometown, now joined in the commotion throughout Kenya, the birthplace of the best distance runners.
The body of the Kenyan, the one chosen to break the two-hour barrier in the marathon, perhaps in Paris 2024, rested this Monday at the Race Course Hospital in Eldoret while hundreds of citizens gathered at the doors of the medical center to pay him a tribute. last tribute. “I found out about the death watching the news on television,” said Samson Cheruiyot, Kiptum's father. The runner's father, “deeply saddened,” asked the authorities for an investigation to clarify the causes of the accident. “He was my only son. “He has left me, his mother and his two children,” he added, dismayed.
In addition to his family, the Kenyan people also mourned the loss of the marathon runner as if it were that of a loved one. “His mental strength and discipline of his were incomparable. It was our future. An extraordinary athlete who has left his mark on the world,” the country's president, William Ruto, praised Kiptum, who was 24 years old.
Athletics was no less. The president of the IOC, Thomas Bach, said goodbye to the “world's fastest marathon runner” on social media and the president of World Athletics, Sebastian Coe, recalled the “fantastic legacy” he leaves behind. Athletics icons such as Faith Kipyegon, Joshua Cheptegei, Sifan Hassan, Mo Farah and David Rudisha also remembered the Kenyan, but among them all stood out Eliud Kipchoge, a marathon legend who held the world record in the specialty until Kiptum lowered him by 34 seconds in October. “I am deeply sad. An athlete who had his whole life ahead of him to achieve excellence,” wrote the double Olympic champion, the last time in Tokyo. The master and the heir, who had never faced each other in a race, were going to challenge each other in Paris 2024 in a duel that promised to go down in sports history.
