Kenya’s Kelvin Kiptum, the holder of the men’s marathon world record at 24 years old, tragically passed away in a car accident on Sunday evening, February 11.<\/p>\n
Alongside him, his coach Gervais Hakizimana from Rwanda also lost his life in the accident on a road in western Kenya.<\/p>\n
Kiptum emerged as a significant figure in marathon running in 2023, rivaling fellow country man Eliud Kipchoge, one of the sport’s greats.<\/p>\n
Notably, Kiptum surpassed Kipchoge’s achievement in Chicago last October, completing the 26.1 miles in two hours and 35 seconds.<\/p>\n
Both athletes were poised to represent Kenya in the marathon at the upcoming Paris Olympics.<\/p>\n
Kenya’s Cabinet Secretary for sports Ababu Namwamba expressed profound grief, calling Kiptum a “special gem” and remarking on the loss for Kenya.<\/p>\n
Those sentiments were shared by Raila Odinga, Kenya’s opposition leader and former prime minister, who hailed Kiptum as a “true hero” and mourned the loss of a remarkable individual and icon in Kenyan athletics.<\/p>\n
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Kenya’s Kelvin Kiptum, the holder of the men’s marathon world record at 24 years old, tragically passed away in a car accident on Sunday evening, February 11. Alongside him, his coach Gervais Hakizimana from Rwanda also lost his life in the accident on a road in western Kenya. Kiptum emerged as a significant figure in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":7104,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[106,70],"tags":[396,397,398],"class_list":["post-7103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-kenyan-sports","category-sports","tag-kiptum","tag-marathon","tag-paris"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/invo.nyarango.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/invo.nyarango.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/invo.nyarango.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/invo.nyarango.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/invo.nyarango.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/invo.nyarango.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7103\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/invo.nyarango.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/invo.nyarango.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/invo.nyarango.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}