He was going for the greatest feat of the marathon and an accident ended his life

When Samuel Gospel He won the Beijing Olympic marathon in 2008 at the age of 21 and set a Games record (2h06m32) – thus being the youngest champion since the time of our Zabalita – the world of the queen of the gran fondo distance was open to him. In that impressive pool of talent that emerges from the Kenyan highlands, Wanjiiru appeared to be the most talented of all. Three years later he was dead, after a domestic accident about which nothing was ever clarified (even with versions of murder). Also arising from the most extreme poverty and in the harshest conditions, Kenyan talents have covered and dominated the environment of major international races for decades, but the “other side” is also usually very sad. As happened to Henry Rono, the author of an unparalleled string of world records on the track in the late 70s, and who was demolished shortly after by alcoholism. Or the doping cases that overshadowed so many achievements in recent times…

What of Kelvin Kiptum He goes for another lift. A real catastrophe. Ready to accomplish the greatest contemporary feat of the marathon (he set out to break 2 hours within two months in Rotterdam and then seek Olympic gold in Paris), a car accident ended his life this Sunday.

Perhaps we have to go back almost half a century, to May 1975to remember an automobile tragedy that took the life of a star in full: in that case, Steve Prefontainethe most charismatic middle distance runner in USA athletics.

Kelvin Kiptum, at 23 years old, ran only three marathons in his life, one better than the other. And the last one, in October, allowed him to remove from the record table no less than the greatest in historyhis compatriot Eliud Kipchoge (Abebe Bikila also enters that league…).

The Kipchoge (40)-Kiptum duel promised to be one of the most exciting in Paris, but we will never see it.

The record of 2 hours and 35 seconds set by Kiptum in the Windy City, taking advantage of the circuit, the weather and also ultra-modern footwear, made him a celebrity in his country, with a crowd that welcomed him in Nairobi until he moved to his home. house in the southeast.

Kiptum was trained by Gervais Hakizimana, a former Rwandan runner, who tried to tone down his ferocious pace of mileage accumulation. “I knew him when he was a boy, a peasant who walked barefoot through the field and he helped on his father’s farm,” said the man.

From that moment on, he built his passion for racing – he had a cousin, Haile Gebrselassie’s training partner, as a point of reference – but he had to convince his father to let him continue (instead of studying to be an electrician).

Kiptum did not even have the means for low-cost sneakers., nor did it have a nearby track where to do speed sessions. “I started training hard on the road and decided to take on the marathon soon.”, he once said, a somewhat surprising determination. Bold, since long-distance runners only dare to take on longer distances once they gain consistency, experience and maturity in distances ranging from 5,000 meters to the half marathon.

Hakizimana himself asked him several times to “lower a change” and not accelerate his progression: “He trains a lot and is in danger of getting injured. I told him to be slower, but he doesn’t want to. If he insists on training so much, in five years he would be finished for athletics. And in this sport, to last, you have to be patient, calm down.”

While the weekly sessions of a star like Kipchoge range between 180 and 220 kilometers per week, Kiptum had sessions of 250 kilometers. before his record in Chicago.

But he always took him as a model of an athlete: “When I was little I saw Eliud training and he told me, ‘one day, once, I will be like Eliud‘. He was an example for us,” Kiptum said after his record.

Like so many Kenyan runners, he dabbled in cross-country and street events in his youth, although without major results. He started competing with some regularity in 2016 and two seasons later he already won a half marathon in 1h02m01 at the altitude of Eldoret, the “temple” of Kenyan long-distance runners and near the site of this Sunday’s catastrophe.

At 20 years old, Kiptum already ran the half marathon in under an hour (59m53 in Belfort, France), after approaching that mark weeks before in Copenhagen. At the end of 2020, after inactivity due to the pandemic, he placed 6th in the Valencia half marathon with a personal record of 58m42 and then ran the same distance by winning in (59:35) and taking eighth place again in Valencia (59:02).

“In 2020, Covid locked us in Kenya, I stayed there for a year and trained him in the forest. I ran with him and then we started a marathon program in 2022,” said the coach.

Kiptum had a spectacular debut as a marathon runner in December 2022 in Valencia with 2h01m53. Of course, the fastest debut of any rider in the history of this event. In April 23 he achieved the London Marathon with 2h01m25, hinting that Kipchoge’s record was close. And finally, Chicago. Three out of three in his brief and lightning-fast marathon journey, three great ones and the bonus of improvement in each one:

In Chicago he again covered the second half at a faster pace than the first and He left behind the record that Kipchoge had set a year earlier in Berlin with 2h01m09. His second stage splits are amazing: 59m45 in London, 59m47 in Chicago. And in the latter case, he was racing towards the record alone, since his compatriot Benson Kipruto, in second place, clocked almost three more minutes.

He had concentrated for three months, accumulating kilometers at the altitude of Chepkorio and the plains of Kerio Valley, Kenya.

In a recent interview with La Gazetta dello Sport had expressedu ambition to lower the 2 hours on April 14in Rotterdam: “I will go there to run fast. The course is ideal and the crowds on the streets encourage you to do your best. I would love to be part of the rich history of this marathon. If the preparation goes in the right direction , with peaks of 270 kilometers per week, and the weather conditions allow it, I will go for it.”

He was born on December 2, 1999. Kelvin Kiptum had all the talent – immense – and the ambition to inscribe his name just like that of those legends, Kipchoge or Bikila, Nurmi or Zatopek, Gebrselassie or… some more, those who did so great for long-distance athletics. He will remain as a luminous – surprising, fleeting and why not, painful at the end – passage of that same story.