Kelvin Kiptum was a gold-medal favorite. After his death, his memory lingers over Olympic marathon

PARIS -- The memory of Kenya’s Kelvin Kiptum hovers over the men’s Olympic marathon.

His competitors will wind through the streets of Paris on Saturday chasing a gold medal he would have been favored to win. They will stare down a world-record time that he once set.

The 24-year-old marathon prodigy was Kenya's newest star in the making before his death in February. He was killed along with his coach in a car crash, the latest tragedy to strike the nation's storied long-distance community.

His teammate, Benson Kipruto, remembers waking up to the news. He couldn’t train. Too heartbroken. That’s why he will think of Kiptum at the start line — a quick remembrance of the runner he didn’t know all that well but who still made a big impact on him. Once the race starts, though, Kipruto will focus on running — because that’s what Kiptum would’ve done.

“Kelvin, much like an athlete like Usain Bolt, (is) the type of talent that comes around once in a lifetime,” Kipruto wrote in an email ahead of the Paris Games. “He was obviously very special.”

For proof of that, look no further than the Chicago Marathon last October. There were pacers lined up to help the marathoners get out to a fast start, but they couldn't keep up with Kiptum.

No one could.

He broke the world record and almost dipped under the hallowed mark of 2 hours. His time on that cool day in Chicago was 2 hours, 35 seconds, breaking the record held by fellow Kenyan Eliud Kipchoge by 34 seconds.

“(Kiptum) would have been the face of marathon running for the next five to seven years,” said Carey Pinkowski, executive race director of the Chicago Marathon. “He was just that talented. There’s no doubt in my mind he would have ran away with the Olympic marathon in Paris.”

Kiptum’s agent, Marc Corstjens, was awakened in the middle of the night by a call.

There had been an accident. Kiptum was gone.

“That kind of news, you do not expect to get,” Corstjens said in a phone interview. “We miss him each day a lot."

Kiptum and his Rwandan coach, Gervais Hakizimana, were killed in the Feb. 11 crash that happened near the town of Kaptagat in western Kenya. It's located in the heart of the high-altitude region that’s renowned as a training base for the best distance runners from Kenya and across the world.

Kiptum was born and raised in the area. He left behind a wife and two kids.

Word traveled fast to the Kenyan runners training at their camp in Kapsabet.

“Someone heard the news during the night and started to wake everyone up to tell us,” Kipruto explained. “The next morning we were supposed to (have) a group training session but we were all too saddened to go for the workout.”

The news of deaths of high-profile Kenyan runners has become all-too-common in recent years.

Marathon runner Francis Kiplagat was among five people killed in a crash in 2018. Nicholas Bett, who won gold in the 400 meter hurdles at the 2015 world championships, also died in a car crash in 2018.

Samuel Wanjiru, the 2008 Olympic marathon champion who, like Kiptum, was blazing a path to stardom, died in 2011 at the age of 24 after falling from a balcony at his home in Kenya. In 2021, Agnes Tirop, a multiple cross-country world champion, was stabbed to death in her home in 2021, allegedly by her husband. He was charged with murder.

As the race nears, fellow Kenyan runners are thinking of Kiptum.

“His presence will remain for so long,” said Hellen Obiri, a two-time Olympic silver medalist in the 5,000 meters who will run in the women's marathon Sunday. “For Team Kenya, it’s like, ‘Let’s do this for him.’ We want to do it for him. We want to do it for the country.”

Kiptum burst on the scene by winning the 2022 Valencia Marathon in a time of 2:01.53, the fastest ever for a debut. The following year, he lowered his time by 28 seconds to win the London Marathon.

It set the stage for his world-record performance in Chicago, a race where he beat runner-up Kipruto by more than 3 minutes.

“I recall how fast the pace was already at 5k and the fact that I couldn’t go with it,” Kipruto said. “I also remember when I crossed the finish line, I heard about the (world record) and I was surprised, but not shocked.”

That would be Kiptum's last marathon. He was slated to run the Rotterdam Marathon in April, where many thought he could dip below the 2-hour mark.

"No doubt in my mind, at Rotterdam, he would have gone under 2 hours,” Pinkowski said. “He was effortless. You see the way he moved and moved over the ground — it was amazing."

Kipchoge, the two-time reigning Olympic champion, actually ran a marathon in 2019 and finished in 1:59.40.2. But it was performed under conditions so tightly controlled to maximize his quest that it wasn't ratified as a world record.

Kiptum and Kipchoge were expected to provide an intriguing all-Kenyan battle for the Olympic title in Paris.

Instead, the stories for this run through Versailles and Paris will be about one man trying to make history — Kipchoge hopes to become the first man to win the Olympic marathon three straight times — and another whose chance was cut short.

“All of us know that Kelvin would and should have been in Paris to run this Olympic Marathon,” Kipruto said. “So undoubtedly he will be remembered.”

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AP Summer Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/2024-paris-olympic-games