Three brutal killings that exposed the dark side of Kenyan running

Special report: Rebecca Cheptegei was the latest victim of a culture in which runners are groomed by male ‘coaches’

When news of Rebecca Cheptegei’s death was announced earlier this month it shook the athletics world but left few surprised. The details are horrific but bear repeating: Cheptegei was allegedly doused in petrol and set alight by her former partner, Dickson Ndiema Marangach, outside her home in the village of Kinyoro, in north-west Kenya. She sustained horrific burns to 80 per cent of her body and died in hospital a few days later. 
The reason few were surprised is that the Olympic marathon runner was the third elite female athlete killed in Kenya in just three years. World medallist Agnes Tirop was found stabbed to death in her Iten home in October 2021, just five weeks after she set a world record in the 10,000m road race. A few months later, Kenyan-born Bahraini athlete Damaris Muthee Mutua was strangled to death in the same town. All the killings have a common link: the main suspect in each case is their former romantic partner. 
Aliphine Tuliamuk, a Kenyan-born distance runner, believes these cases are all directly related to the fact they were athletes. “Her story is not unique,” Tuliamuk, 35, says of Cheptegei. “It’s something that we’ve had over and over again. 
“I grew up without a lot, and a lot of these athletes grew up with nothing. They’ve worked so hard to make a name for themselves and make a living so that they can have a better life. And then the same success that they were looking for is the thing that kills them.” 
Tuliamuk grew up just over an hour’s drive from where Cheptegei, 33, was killed. Though she never raced Cheptegei, she knew of her as a fellow athlete and mother in distance running, and had seen her represent Uganda at the Paris Games only the previous month. 
Though Tuliamuk has represented the USA since 2016, including at the Tokyo 2020 Games, she was born and raised in Kenya. She says that over the years she has heard of similar stories at the elite running hubs within the region she grew up, where hundreds of promising athletes have dreams of joining the professional ranks. 
There, she claims, young or successful female athletes are preyed on by men – often failed athletes themselves – who then begin romantic relationships with them and eventually control their finances. When the women try to take back control, the abuse often becomes physical. 
Tuliamuk says she knows stories of athletes who have been left in financial ruin as a result. Another had a partner that threatened to burn their house down, with them locked inside, and she heard of one who was made to sit on a hot stove by her husband. The abuse ended their careers. 
“Everybody that is coming from their villages to training camps has heard of the big names, like Eliud Kipchoge, and the kind of lifestyle that they live, the money they made through running. Everybody wants a piece of that pie,” Tuliamuk says. “It’s now become a culture, where a lot of these guys that try to run and they can’t really succeed, they literally are in these training centres like Iten, Nyahururu, and they’re just scouting out to see a woman who has potential. 
“They will take them under their wing, offer a bit of financial help, pace them at first, and then decide, ‘OK, I’m going to be your coach’. When you have an opportunity to have one-on-one coaching, in theory, that would be a good thing. The girl probably thinks, ‘wow, this guy really cares about me’. But as she succeeds, he misuses her finances. When she speaks up, she gets abused.” 
This issue does not exist in a vacuum in athletics, but extends across Kenya. The 2022 Demographic Health Survey in Kenya found that 41 per cent of women who had been married had experienced physical violence. Africa Data Hub, which tracks femicide cases reported in Kenyan newspapers, found 500 women were killed from January 2016 to December 2023; 407 of the suspects were current or ex-partners to the victims. 
According to Reuters, Cheptegei’s former partner Marangach was under investigation for her death before he also died in hospital, due to injuries sustained during the attack. Their dispute is said to be over a plot of land owned by Cheptegei. The news agency also interviewed members of her family, who said Cheptegei had gone to the police at least three times this year to report Marangach, for threats and physical abuse. “My daughter died because the police failed,” her father, Joseph Cheptegei, told Reuters. 
Some athletes have been moved to try to enact change over the last three years. Kenyan runner Mary Ngugi-Cooper, who won the Great North Run a couple of weeks ago, responded to Tirop’s death by setting up Nala Track Club in 2022. It is an all-female running club in Nyahururu Town, which aims to give young women a supportive and safe space to train. It was initially self-funded by Ngugi-Cooper, but has received sponsorship from Nike since April, and aims to develop more female coaches in Kenya too. 
The Tirop’s Angels Trust was founded by some Kenyan athletes and Tirop’s family too, with an aim to prevent violence against women and girls by engaging communities in prevention efforts. Its board members include Tokyo 2020 Olympic marathon champion Peres Jepchirchir and 2022 London Marathon champion Amos Kipruto. 
Responding to Cheptegei’s death, World Athletics chief Lord Coe vowed to investigate how they can support and protect athletes from domestic abuse. Tuliamuk says the athletics community needs to help to break the taboo of domestic abuse in Kenya, and also called for more men to be vocal on the issue. 
“Absolutely, prominent male athletes should speak out – it’s going to take the whole community to have a conversation and change this,” she says. “I think World Athletics do have a responsibility. I’m glad Seb Coe is putting this issue into his attention, because there’s a lot of athletes that are suffering. But it’s vague. Relationships are very complicated. Unless an athlete comes forward and says, ‘I need help, my spouse is abusing me’, I just don’t know how an organisation like World Athletics can go in.” 
More than anything, she says there needs to be a preventative system in place that empowers young female athletes, to warn them of grooming tactics. “You know how we are doing anti-doping education? I feel we need to start doing education in these training camps, educating these young women. Prepare these girls to know some of the signs of an abusive relationship. 
“And we have to have the proper channels to report. We have to have safe places. If a woman is at risk of getting their life taken away, they need to be able to go somewhere at a moment’s notice and get away from this person. Right now, they don’t have any of that. I’m not saying that it’s a completely helpless situation, but the time to do something was yesterday – or years ago.”
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