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Sam Borden
Multiple Authors
Editor’s note: This story contains graphic descriptions of gender-based violence.
This is a story about a Kenyan runner. Her name is Agnes Ngetich. Her smile is wide. Her legs are thin but mighty. She was discovered by a scout when she was barely a teenager and running barefoot in the countryside because her family couldn’t afford shoes. Now she’s a world champion.
Two years ago, Agnes was in Tokyo preparing for a race. She looked at her phone and saw a story going viral: A marathon runner in rural Kenya named Rebecca Cheptegei had been attacked outside her house, allegedly by her ex-boyfriend, after a long-running argument over land ownership. The man ambushed Cheptegei and poured gasoline all over her face and body. Then he lit her on fire and poured more gasoline on her as she screamed and burned in front of her two children.
The brutality of the attack evoked shock and disgust throughout the world. Agnes’ reaction was different. “I saw someone was killed,” she said, shaking her head at the memory. “And I was like, ‘Oh … again?'”
She said the word — again? — calmly and evenly. The resignation in her voice was withering. She sighed.
Agnes Ngetich is 25 years old and has everything in front of her. She is already a world-record holder, already a superstar. By all accounts, she will hold a trophy at a major marathon sooner than later. An athlete her age, with her abilities, is supposed to overflow with hope and buoyancy and light.
Instead, she said again. What else could she say when the truth is all around her?
The truth that Rebecca Cheptegei was the fourth high-profile female runner in Kenya to be killed in three years, all allegedly by a husband or boyfriend. The truth that studies show more than one-third of Kenyan women say they have experienced gender-based violence firsthand. The truth that her dreams come with a cost.
Kenya has a history of extraordinary women runners, and Agnes is the latest in a long line of champions. But she is also rising in a world where so many hypertalented athletes’ lives have been derailed by a pattern of violence that is systemic, largely undiscussed and critically underregulated in Kenya.
“As a lady, it’s not easy,” Agnes said. “It’s scary.”
Outside of Kenya, that reality is difficult to see; Kenya’s running dominance is too blinding. At the last world championships, Kenyan women won every single distance event from the 800 meters through the marathon. Kenyan women have won six straight Boston Marathons and 11 of the past 15. Of the 15 fastest marathon times ever recorded by women, more than half were run by Kenyans.
Agnes Ngetich projects to be a legend, a historic champion who follows the lineage of Catherine Ndereba or Mary Keitany or Hellen Obiri. Her form is exceptional, her times eye-popping. “She is the future of Kenyan running,” her French coach, Julien Di Maria, said more than once during our conversations.
For Agnes, the biggest question is survival. Because in a country where most live in poverty — the median salary is under $500 per year — and a relentless patriarchy underpins much of the culture, there are no guarantees. A woman like Agnes — a woman who wins races and earns appearance fees and gets shoe deals — is much more than a fascination.
She is a target. For men who want to profit off her. For men who want to take advantage of her. For men who want to control her.
Last spring in Philadelphia, a few days before Agnes earned a $50,000 prize for dominating another race, I asked her if she understood her own situation. If she understood that the more she wins, the more she puts her life in danger. She nodded. And she shrugged.
“When you are a success here,” she said. “Everyone wants to be your boyfriend. Everyone wants to marry you.”
‘He kicked the door and threatened to kill me’
The weathered arch above the road leading into Iten declares the town in western Kenya as the “Home of Champions.” Joan Chelimo is one of them. She grew up poor, selling charcoal for shillings, and has won numerous elite races, including in Boston, Prague and Seoul. Chelimo is 35 and married to Julien Di Maria, who came to Kenya from Paris in 2012. They wed in 2017, about two years after Joan escaped a relationship in which she said a partner beat her, stole her money and abandoned her when she was pregnant. Joan doesn’t hide this history but also isn’t inclined to give details. Agnes lives in Kechei, the training camp that Joan and Julien own in Iten, and they are largely responsible for her day-to-day life. Joan calls Agnes “my daughter.” Agnes calls Joan “another mother.”
The athletes at the camp ate braised goat and ugali, the popular Kenyan cornmeal starch, on the day I arrived. After eating, Joan and I chatted about the cost of goat meat, the intensity of Kenya’s rainy season and how long it might be before Agnes could start competing in marathons. We were interrupted by Joan’s phone ringing. Joan got up and paced as she listened to the caller.
She asked a few questions in Swahili — “Where are you? Are you safe?” — then listened some more. “An athlete is in trouble,” she told me after she hung up. “She needs help.”
Joan climbed into the driver’s seat of the camp’s white van. It was late now. Many areas in Iten don’t have electricity, and there are few paved roads and no streetlights, so movement after nightfall isn’t common or particularly safe. Still, Joan pulled onto the bumpy dirt trails and tried to follow the woman’s directions. “Which center did you say is past there?” she asked as the van thudded over muddy potholes. Joan’s cellphone toppled from the cupholders and rattled on the floor. “Take the rough road on the left,” the woman’s voice called out through the speakerphone. The van’s gears grinded and groaned. Joan parked near a shuttered shed.
On foot, she moved slowly down a narrow, pitch-black path that cut through the village farmland. She used her phone’s flashlight to light her way. She rapped on an iron gate, and a man, the woman’s neighbor, opened it and waved her past. A few dim lights glowed inside a squat, slender home with stone walls and a sheet metal roof. Laundry dangled on strings pulled taut from the fence posts. A child’s plastic scooter lay on its side in the grass. Joan slipped off her shoes and went inside.
Medals from races all over the world hung on one wall. The woman who had called sat on a faded sofa, an infant in her arms. A reality romance show called “Hello Mr. Right Kenya” played on a small TV. “I’ll be your girlfriend!” one of the participants squealed on the screen. The woman asked her young son to go outside for a few minutes so she could talk to Joan. She didn’t want her son to hear.
“Did he really threaten your life?” Joan asked once the boy was outside. She took the woman’s hand. The woman nodded and said her husband hit her often. This last time, she said, he tried to strangle her. They fought about money, she said, particularly about control of a few small rental homes they purchased with funds the woman had earned from running.
The husband “was drunk all the time,” she said, and he told her over and over that she was “foolish.” Joan shook her head. The baby roused and spit up, and the woman dabbed her child’s mouth.
“He kicked the door and threatened to kill me,” she said.
Joan listened. She asked questions. The boy fidgeted outside on a chilly night. At one point, the neighbors — an older couple — encouraged the woman to reconcile with the man. These types of issues are best solved at home, they said. Joan interrupted them. She told the woman she would help her find a lawyer and a counselor. When the woman tried to minimize what had happened to her or suggest that maybe her neighbors were right, Joan frowned.
“Do you want to die like Cheptegei?” she asked.
‘She will go back to him’
The red clay roads in Iten rise and fall over rolling hills about 8,000 feet above sea level. They wind past vegetable stands and SIM card vendors, their serpentine loops forming training trails of every distance a runner could want. The next morning, Joan Chelimo stretched her legs and prepared to set out for a run.
“I didn’t sleep well,” she said. “I never do after those calls.”
I asked what she thought would happen with the woman and her husband. “She will go back to him,” she said. Most of the women who call her do.
Part of that is a cultural disposition toward protecting marriage, Joan said. Kenyans, particularly those in rural areas, still frequently pay dowries. One woman I spoke with said her father received a cow from her husband’s family before her marriage, and tradition pushes spouses to stay together regardless of what happens in their relationship.
These are deep-rooted customs, values held by both men and women, expectations passed down through the generations. Joan told me that when she first started helping women who were being abused, she frequently received social media messages from men telling her that “it was OK for women to be killed. Like, ‘They did not do what they were supposed to do.'” Another Kenyan marathon runner, Mary Ngugi-Cooper, told me that she “grew up seeing” women being abused and so the notion that she should accept it once she got married was ingrained. “Most people out there think the same,” she said. “Our mom endured, so we should endure.”
The majority endure in silence. Few believe change is possible. Many female runners, Joan said, have little confidence that anyone who works in the government or the police force or the justice system or for Athletics Kenya, the sports federation, will do anything to help them if they report abuse.
“I think all these institutions have failed our athletes,” said Evelyn Watta, a Kenyan journalist. “They just wait to sing their glories, but they don’t know what these women are going through in their homes.”
The woman who called Joan that night did file a report at the police station about her husband’s violence. She told the officers that he tried to choke her to death. The officers took her statement and gave her a small paper stub — a receipt, essentially. The woman showed it to Joan, who spun it around in her hands as they talked. She handed it back to the woman when she left.
“It’s what they call an occurrence book, an OB number — it’s just a reference number,” Watta told me. “The investigative aspect is zero. The follow-up is zero.”
It’s why Joan sleeps fitfully most nights. When a woman cries out, she said, it sometimes feels like she is the only one listening.
“This is why they call me,” Joan said. “Just look at what happened with Agnes.”
Progress ‘on paper’
Agnes Tirop’s sister and brother still live in the three-room house in Iten where she was killed in 2021. Tirop was 25 when she died, the same age Agnes Ngetich is now. She held the 10K world record — a title Agnes holds today. Tirop was seen as the future of Kenyan running, too. According to police and pathology reports, Tirop was dressed in her running clothes and likely about to go train when she was smashed in the head with a jembe, which is a farming tool with a wooden handle. She was then stabbed in the neck three times with a kitchen knife and left to die on the floor.
According to Tirop’s family, there was a history of violence between Agnes and her husband, Ibrahim Rotich. Agnes’ younger sister, Eve, who lived with her and Rotich, told police about an incident in which she came home to find her sister crying on the ground and Rotich standing over her holding a rungu, or club.
Agnes Tirop’s home is just a short drive from Joan and Julien’s training camp. When I arrived, Agnes’ brother, Martin, brought me to the window that police broke as they tried to get inside after Rotich allegedly padlocked the house doors shut. Officers found Tirop’s body in her bedroom.
While Martin talked, Eve sat on the sofa in the narrow front room. She showed me the cellphone Agnes bought for her and smiled when she talked about how she and her sister loved watching the African TV channel “Maisha Magic” together or about how they ate ice cream on the weekends.
Eve barely looked toward her sister’s bedroom, even as we talked for nearly an hour. In the five years since their sister’s killing, Martin said, Eve has refused to enter the room where Agnes died. “It has affected her the most,” Martin said quietly during a moment when Eve stepped away. Then he told me that Eve wants to become a professional runner.
According to Africa Data Hub, there were at least 456 instances of femicide in Kenya from 2016 to 2021, with the true toll likely much higher. Yet Agnes Tirop was famous — a World Cross Country champion, a two-time medalist at the World Athletics Championships and an Olympian. For those pleading for change, the thinking was simple: This time the violence couldn’t be ignored.
News coverage of Tirop’s killing was frenzied and fed a passionate public reaction. Another runner, Edith Muthoni, was found dead during the same week after her boyfriend “savagely attacked her” with a knife, according to detectives. Grief combined with hope among many female runners that significant change might be imminent.
But nearly every athlete, coach and trainer I spoke with in and around Iten said there was plenty of talk — plenty of politicians and leaders making statements about the need to protect women — but little progress in the months and years after Tirop’s death. Some moves felt largely cosmetic, many said, such as highlighting the presence of “gender desks” at police stations, ostensibly to encourage women to feel more comfortable reporting abuse. One woman runner, when I asked if these desks helped, said, “Maybe if they actually had people there.”
The government response felt similarly papered over, runners said. In response to Tirop’s killing, the Ministry of Sports, Culture and Heritage formed a special committee to examine “challenges facing women in sports.” At a conference held in early 2022, the task force unveiled dozens of recommendations. Items such as “Create and promote a zero-tolerance policy for … sexual and gender-based violence within sports organizations” and “screen and vet … to avoid hiring coaches and managers who have a history of abuse” were cited as critical areas for change, according to a report the task force published.
When I asked a longtime coach about follow-through on the initiatives, he laughed. He suggested I look at what happened after Rebecca Cheptegei was killed, just two years later in 2024. At that time, amid a new round of global horror over the ruthlessness of that attack, the Kenyan government responded by calling for the formation of another task force. Some of its members even served on the previous one.
“Most of them are just formed to show that the government is doing something,” Watta, the journalist, said. “They had their findings, their recommendations, and most of it is just that — it’s on paper.”
The new committee’s mission made that clear. Among the responsibilities the government assigned to the group: “Ensure full implementation of the report … [from] 2022.”
‘I saw a champion’
One sunny afternoon at Joan and Julien’s training camp, Agnes Ngetich came into the courtyard with a giant smile on her face. She bounced over to a woman who had just arrived and wrapped her in a bear hug. The two giggled as they held each other. “Madame!” Agnes shrieked.
Ruth Bundotich — everyone calls her Madame Ruth — was one of the first women to be a full-time coach in Kenya. She runs a modest camp in Kamwosor, a village about 45 miles south of Iten. Children live in multi-bunk cottages alongside Ruth and her family, and the athletes attend a nearby school. On Sundays, Ruth takes everyone to the church down the road where her husband is a pastor. At the end of the service, everyone stands up from their plastic chair and sings together. Agnes lived and trained at Ruth’s camp for about seven years before moving to Joan and Julien’s in 2022. “Even now, when she’s in Iten, she says, ‘I’m going home’ and she comes here,” Ruth said.
Many young girls who show talent at running are groomed by men and lured into relationships that quickly become controlling and abusive. Agnes Tirop’s husband got to know her when she was a teenager, and he pulled her away from her certified coach so he could coach her and become the main influence in her life. “It didn’t make any sense,” Agnes Tirop’s father, Vincent, told me. “He wasn’t even an athlete — how could he be a coach?”
Julien Di Maria said he has thought frequently about what might have happened to Agnes Ngetich if things had gone differently. She is one of eight children, and her father died when she was young. Her family was so poor that she dropped out of school and sold bootleg alcohol to help scrape together enough shillings for food. “A husband is often the way out,” Julien said.
At a regional race in 2015 where Agnes was running barefoot, she built up a huge lead during the 5,000 meters but fainted on the final lap because she hadn’t eaten anything all day. “I was so hungry,” Agnes said. “When I woke up, I was crying.” Ruth, who was at the race with some of her young athletes, ran over to help. Through her tears, Agnes told Ruth that she wanted her “No. 1” — her first-place finish — and Ruth comforted her. It will be OK, Ruth said. There will be more races.
It might have been the luckiest moment of Agnes’s life. Ruth invited her to come stay at her camp in Kamwosor. “She told me I could be a professional athlete,” Agnes said. “I didn’t even know what that was.”
When Agnes ran well at a race, Ruth counseled her about how to handle the inevitable stream of men who would try to convince her that they should be the ones coaching her. When they asked for her phone number, Agnes often gave them Ruth’s number. “There was a time — not even one time, many times — that people are coming in and trying to take advantage of Agnes,” Ruth said. “And when they come in, I also come in.”
“Madame is everything to me,” Agnes said.
Ruth agreed to widen Agnes’ circle after Julien noticed her at a cross country race in 2016. In addition to operating the training camp with Joan, Julien is also a partner in an athlete management agency named Ikaika, which has many clients connected with Adidas. After seeing Agnes run, Julien called his business partner — an agent named Davor Savija — and told him he had seen a star. “The energy that girl was carrying, it was like something mystical,” Julien told me. “I saw not only an athlete, I saw a champion.”
Madame Ruth already knew Julien and Davor, and she knew that they were trustworthy. She took Julien to visit Agnes’ family home in Kinamget Tabare, a remote rural village near the Metkei Forest. They hiked through thickets of bamboo to reach it. “There was no electricity, nothing like that,” Julien said. The first contract Agnes received from Adidas was “by Western standards, minuscule,” Davor said, but significant in Kenya. Agnes got sneakers and running gear. She received enough money to help her siblings pay school fees and, eventually, upgrade their house. For a time, her brothers and sisters literally did not believe what was happening. “They’re like, ‘Are you sure you have all this money?'” Agnes said.
“Now, I’m the father,” she said.
Very quickly, Agnes sensed a difference in how she was seen by others in her village. Before, she and her family were so poor that “we were just hated by everyone,” she said. People “didn’t even want to greet you, to touch your hand.” Then, suddenly, people approached her whenever she came back to see her mother and siblings. They asked her for a little bit of help, some shillings for school fees or cooking supplies.
Agnes frowned as she admitted that the constant requests kept her from going home as often as she wanted. “Everyone wants money,” she said.
‘The goose that lays the golden egg’
Sunrise comes with sound in Iten, a steady thrumming of feet. Packs of runners — locals, visitors, elite athletes like Agnes or hopeful teens — pound up and down the dirt roads, a stream of singlets and spandex thumping past ramshackle vendors, milk carts and assorted goats chewing on the grassy edges. Vehicles give runners the right of way here.
There are lots of theories on why Kenyans — and specifically the Kalenjin ethnic group, which comes from the Great Rift Valley, where Iten sits — have been so good at running for so long. From a scientific standpoint, there are several biological realities that figure to play a role, starting with living and training at high altitude likely leading to bigger lung capacity. Add in a daily routine for many children that involves lots of running — sometimes as much as several miles to school and back because most families do not have vehicles — and, as Joan told me, “It’s like training to be an athlete every day.”
For young girls, though, the notion of making real money through running is still a fairly new concept. Running itself has been ingrained in Kenyan life since well before the country even gained its independence from Great Britain in 1963, but it wasn’t until the 1990s that Kenyan women began to have success on the sport’s biggest stages.
There were scattered stars, including Lornah Kiplagat, who won the Los Angeles marathon twice; Joyce Chepchumba, who was the first Kenyan woman to win the London Marathon; and Margaret Okayo, who won Boston, London and New York (twice). But traditional gender roles in Kenya prevented overarching acceptance of women as independent breadwinners.
It is the same today. Whether men actually earn the money themselves or not, traditional family structure calls for them to be the ones in control of a household; it wasn’t until 2010 that Kenyan law even permitted women to own land without a man’s name also being on the deed. Not surprisingly, many instances of abuse involving athletes are rooted in fights over property.
“A lot of athletes come from rural communities which still have ties to their traditional values,” said Sarah Ochwada, a lawyer who works with female athletes. “And one of those … is to submit to your husband.
“So as soon as you start making money, the risk heightens,” Ochwada said. “Because now you’re seen as the goose that lays the golden egg. Everyone is going to want you. And everyone is going to want to control you.”
At any given race in Kenya, there are, as one longtime agent put it, “loads of men who say they are coaches or physios or masseuses watching for young girls who might be their ticket.” And while uber-talents like Agnes are obviously the most lucrative, the agent said, the truth is that countless Kenyan women can earn enough to lift a man well out of poverty.
“Road running isn’t just the New York, Boston and London marathons,” the agent said, and he began listing races in smaller cities in the Middle East, Eastern Europe and Asia. “There are probably 100 marathons in China alone, many with 30- or 40-thousand-dollar prizes. There are half-marathons, 10Ks — so many races. There are hundreds of Kenyan women who are getting slices of that, and so there are many, many more Kenyan men who see it as an opportunity.”
Some men, as Agnes Tirop’s husband did, install themselves as coach and demand payment from the agent or sponsor for their work. Others force the women to have joint bank accounts and control the money that way. Many husbands are more crude, the agent told me: They simply wait until their wife’s contract with a management or shoe company is up for renewal, then demand a payoff in exchange for their wife re-signing.
“Once they have control,” the agent said, “they basically hold the woman for ransom. And most people in the business just pay because that’s what it takes to keep the woman running.”
‘There is no hope at all’
Soft, chunky soil pastures are linked by narrow, winding mud paths on the way to Kinyoro, the village near the Ugandan border where Rebecca Cheptegei was killed. When Joan visited Cheptegei’s family, they showed her the branches of the small tree Cheptegei tried to wrap herself in as she burned to death. Even two years later, her parents have her medals and pictures hanging all over the walls of their home.
“I think they just feel helpless,” Joan said.
Rebecca was one of 11 children, and her athletic ability became the family’s buoy. Her father, Joseph, warmly welcomed me inside the mud-walled house in Kitale where he and his wife sleep. He and his wife offered tea. But when he showed me the wooden structure where they stockpile as much farmed corn as they can for all the children and grandchildren to eat, he said softly, “There is no money anymore.” We had to be quiet because an infant — the son of one of Rebecca’s brothers — was sleeping in a blanket on the ground.
“Now that she is gone, I have nothing and no strength left,” said Rebecca’s mother, Agnes.
“We had never imagined such a death — someone being burned in broad daylight,” Joseph said. His shoulders dropped. “People just watched as if it were a movie.”
Rebecca’s mother served milk tea in tiny cups. She described how her daughter “loved jokes and fun” and “lived her life with pure joy.”
“When she visited, she’d be laughing right from the gate all the way in,” she said. “Laughing with the kids, laughing with me.”
She sobbed. “I have lost a pillar.”
Rebecca brought groceries to the house on her motorcycle and bought clothes for her nieces and nephews. These days, the main source of family money comes from selling bananas that grow on a tiny plot of land Rebecca purchased before she died. Her brother Jacob used to make some shillings by giving people rides on his scooter to and from the village center, but when Jacob hurt his leg in an accident, there was no money to pay for medical treatment. “When I think about what happened to Rebecca,” Jacob said, “I get so angry. She was the light of our family.”
The man who allegedly killed Rebecca Cheptegei, Dickson Ndiema Marangach, also died from burns he sustained while attacking her. His death offers the Cheptegeis at least a sliver of closure, Jacob said, but their anger hasn’t waned: They are furious over what they believe was negligence from the local police department.
Joseph said they reported Marangach’s abuse of Rebecca to the police three times before her death. Each time, Joseph said, officers essentially told him that these were domestic issues that should be solved at home. Joseph riffled through stacked-up papers in the corner of the house searching for his receipt of the reports but could not find it. He did, however, describe in detail how the family went to the police station to express concern as recently as two days before Rebecca was killed. (Kenyan police didn’t respond to requests for comment.)
“We were at the police station on Friday,” Joseph said, “and told to come back on Monday. … So on Sunday, [Marangach] bought 5 liters of petrol in Endebess” and waited for Rebecca to return home. Joseph shook his head.
“The police killed my child,” Agnes said.
Sixty miles away, the Tirop family’s grief is layered differently; they are still fighting for closure of their own. Tirop’s success put her parents and siblings in a more stable position than the Cheptegeis — their house in the town of Mosoriot is larger and has electricity, and they have several cows in addition to their farming — but their battle with Kenya’s court system continues, despite five years passing since Tirop was killed.
Agnes Tirop’s father, Vincent, works the land and waits for updates that hardly ever come. “There is no hope at all,” he said. “We still haven’t gotten justice for Agnes.”
Police arrested Rotich two days after he allegedly killed Tirop. He was found 500 miles away in Mombasa. Police charged Rotich with murder. He pleaded not guilty. One of Tirop’s running partners testified in court that Tirop and Rotich fought often and that the source of the violence was frequently Rotich’s desire to control Tirop’s money.
“The evidence is overwhelming,” Richard Warigi, the Tirop family’s lawyer, told me.
Yet in November 2023, a judge granted Rotich bail, citing the Kenyan commitment to a presumption of innocence until guilt is proven. Among the conditions of the bail was a requirement that Rotich check in with local police every Monday. But in February 2025, Rotich failed to appear at a scheduled court hearing, and police admitted in court that “no record was kept” of the weekly check-ins, Warigi said. Twenty months later, Rotich has not been found.
Desperate for answers, the family organized a protest at the courthouse in June. “We realized the case was dying,” Vincent told me. But the judge admonished him for “doing wrong to [the] many people” who had their business at the court interrupted. “We understand you’re aggrieved and very bitter,” the judge told Vincent during the proceeding, “but it’s not right to disrupt the entire day.” The judge pushed back the trial again.
Agnes Tirop is buried in the garden outside her family’s house. Her headstone has her name, her birthday and her date of death — rendered as “sunrise” and “sunset.” A line at the bottom reads, “Loved beyond words.” The family prays at her grave. As we looked at her headstone, Vincent said, “I keep going to court even though I don’t have money to fuel the car to get there.” Then he said, “I have to continue, otherwise it will be like we have surrendered.” His eyes were tired, his shoulders slumped. Later, his wife, Dinah, broke down in tears. “Many athletes are being killed, and nobody cares.”
‘We have done our level best’
A green open-air piazza sits at the center of the Athletics Kenya offices in Nairobi, the sleek and bustling capital of Kenya. The federation that oversees the country’s runners occupies a two-story square building, and the hum of traffic is constant; it feels far more than 200 miles away from Iten.
A large sign that says “President’s Office” hangs over the door of Jackson Tuwei’s corner suite. Tuwei, a retired commander in the Kenyan army, has led the federation — which has been plagued by various corruption controversies for decades — since 2015.
We sat down in a long conference room for an interview, and Tuwei brought pages of printed notes. At one point, he read a lengthy list of prominent female Kenyan runners and their accomplishments, starting with Tekla Chemabwai, who was the first female Kenyan Olympian in 1968.
Tuwei said Athletics Kenya takes “very, very seriously” concerns about the welfare of its athletes and said that “we have done our level best” to address abuse of female athletes. He added several times that “we are not the only ones” who should bear responsibility for protecting runners from violence.
Since Tirop’s killing, Tuwei said, the federation “appointed a safeguarding team” and has focused on properly registering athletes and coaches, as well as identifying problematic training camps where young runners might be at risk. “We have even closed some camps,” he said.
Athletics Kenya has also certified more women coaches — 43 in 2025, according to Tuwei’s notes — because, he said, the federation “identified that there was a problem, maybe, in the camps where the female athletes, you know, were having problems.”
There is no denying that the federation reacted in the aftermath of Tirop’s killing. Some changes were made. The concern, according to multiple runners and coaches, is that there is no sustained effort to carry through many initiatives to the point of having a noticeable impact.
Tuwei told me that “we have done a lot of education” for coaches and athletes around gender-based violence, but many coaches said that while the new safeguarding team might be holding sessions about GBV and proper protocols for coaches and athletes, there are no rules about attendance. There have also not been any new education requirements put in place to ensure that coaches participate in these seminars. And there are no policies being enforced about relationships between young athletes and their coaches.
“The registration, yes, it’s done,” Joan Chelimo said. “But we need all coaches to be certified.” The registration, she said, amounted to little more than a collection of names. It also hasn’t reduced the number of men — many unregistered and uncertified — who show up at races and try to glom on to a talented young female runner.
“I normally teach them, ‘When you run well, people will come for you,'” Ruth Bundotich said.
The biggest disconnect is a glaring disparity between Athletics Kenya’s viewpoint on how common the abuse is and the viewpoint of the athletes themselves. About halfway into our conversation, Tuwei shifted in his chair.
“We’ve got statistics on exactly what we have done,” he said, consulting his notes. “There are, for example, six athletes who have been affected in this gender-based violence. That is a number from 2021 up to now.”
I paused. “Did you say that, as far as you know, there have been six athletes affected?” I asked.
“Correct.”
“By GBV since … 2021?”
“Yes.”
Tuwei waited.
“In talking to the athletes that we’ve spoken with, they believe the problem is much bigger than six athletes,” I said. “How would you respond to the idea that it’s a much bigger problem than that?”
Tuwei looked back at his paper. “Well, you see — you see, there — there are — there are levels — there are levels of effects that take place in this one,” he said. “When I talk about the six, I’m talking about six who — who have actually — been affected more than the others.”
At another moment, Tuwei reiterated that the federation doesn’t believe violence against its female athletes is a widespread issue. I asked him why it took so long for many of the safety measures proposed after Tirop was killed to be put into practice. “You see,” he said, “it is not something that happens every day.“
The phrasing reminded me of something Joan had said when we talked back at her camp.
I live here. I live in Iten. And I get reports every day.
‘I felt like something needs to be done’
Joan wedged her car into a tight spot in the dirt behind a long, thin one-story building five minutes down the road from her training camp in Iten. She met a group of about a dozen women inside — all runners, all survivors of abuse — and they sat on plastic chairs on a tiny patio. The women passed Kenyan shillings into the middle, and Joan and another woman wrapped them together and wrote down each contribution in a ledger.
The group was doing chama, or table banking, which is a common Kenyan practice where women pool money weekly and then lend it out to each other when needed to help with expenses. Joan teaches the women financial literacy: how to save, how to understand income and spending realities, how to protect oneself. “I take them through healing and recovery for some time,” Joan said. “And this is the empowerment bit.”
Even though Joan wants to focus on her own career, she knows there are horrible things happening to girls and women all around her. And she feels, without doubt, there is not nearly enough assistance from people and organizations in positions of power. After Tirop was killed, she said, “I felt like I would not just sit, cry and mourn. I felt like something needs to be done.”
She and a few other runners who were close to Tirop formed an organization called Tirop’s Angels. Adidas, which sponsored Tirop, supported the group, and it has held events that focus primarily on advocacy and raising awareness about abuse.
But Joan wasn’t satisfied. As she learned about more and more women who were victims, she “felt so useless,” she told me. “Like, am I really making an impact? They are getting killed every year.” Cheptegei’s killing shook her harder.
In the past year, she started this second group — it’s called Strides for Africa — that meets every week. At a meeting in February, the women discussed how one member might be able to use some of the money to pay for travel to an important race. At a break, they laughed and made a TikTok video where they danced around on the lush grass. They also debated how to help another runner who had been struggling for months with an abusive husband.
One of the women told the group that she had tried to help this athlete last year, “but they felt like I had interfered in their relationship” and nothing changed. The other athletes nodded.
Joan was direct. “It can start today with some minor disagreements, then you’re beaten a little, right?” she told the group. “It starts that way, then tomorrow someone is killed.” She led a discussion on how to help guide women toward counseling.
Alice, a runner who said she joined the group after escaping a marriage where her husband abused her and threatened to murder her and her children, told me that Joan saved her. Joan helped her get a passport. Joan helped her return to training. Joan helped her find independence.
Alice was preparing for a marathon and hoped to run another race in Asia a few months later. Finally, she said, she feels safe. “Without her, I would probably be dead,” she whispered.
There are other women trying to help, too. Kolly Wanders, who was born in Iten and works as an athlete manager, founded the Tulizo Foundation, which aims to mentor young girls and increase education around gender-based violence.
Mary Ngugi-Cooper, who took third at the Boston Marathon in April, created Nala Track Club, a girls-only training camp in the town of Nyahururu. There are only female coaches, physios and support staff at Nala, which Nike helped create and supports. The goal is to produce a safe environment for the girls to develop as runners while also modeling the notion that coaching is a viable path for women athletes and not just for men.
“When I grew up, in our camp the woman was the housekeeper,” Mary told me. “The coach was a male. The physio was a male. So I thought, ‘OK, the only thing you can be is a housekeeper.’ … It’s important to have females in positions of leadership because the girls see it. And they know, ‘OK, I don’t have to be a cook. I don’t have to be a cleaner.'”
These are small steps. Joan and Mary know that. Ruth, too. A handful of girls in a camp. A small group of women learning how to manage their money. A few women coaches amid a sea of men. It might not yet be transformative, but it is meaningful. “Many lives are being saved,” Joan said.
In many ways, Agnes Ngetich is one of them. Ruth found her, protected her and guided her forward. Now she lives and trains alongside Joan. They eat together, learn French together in a weekly class. They sit on the comfy chairs in the corner of the dining room and watch Diamond League track meets together. “I was lucky,” Agnes told me one day before lunch, and it wasn’t hard to see what she meant: In a world with men everywhere, women have been the ones to raise her up.
“I know not everyone can be lucky like me,” Agnes said.
‘Let me do this’
A giant stuffed teddy bear lies on Agnes Ngetich’s bed in her room at Joan and Julien’s training camp. She takes her meals in the dining room and gets her treatment in the physio room that sits alongside the buckets where the laundry is done. A tall fence with barbed wire and a metal gate secures the camp from unexpected visitors. But there are still cracks.
In the summer of 2024, Agnes was recovering from an injury and training a bit easier than usual. Julien had business in Europe, so he asked an assistant — a Kenyan coach he trusted — to oversee Agnes’ regimen for a few weeks while he was away.
One day, Julien got a frantic phone call from Madame Ruth. Agnes had revealed to her that the assistant coach was pushing Agnes to leave the camp with him. The assistant said that he would be with Agnes and that he would become her new coach. He told her that he would handle her finances better and that Julien and Madame were stealing from her. Agnes was confused. Ruth was frantic. It was more dire than anything that happened when Agnes was in Ruth’s camp.
Julien returned quickly to Kenya, and, with Ruth’s help, they intervened. The assistant coach was removed. Agnes was reassured. But it was frightening how swiftly it happened. “He almost managed to manipulate Agnes and take her out of here,” Julien said. “She was young and very close to it. But luckily Madame was there.”
These are the margins on which a career hinges. A life, even.
On a crisp, mid-September morning in Copenhagen, Denmark, Agnes stepped to the starting line of the half-marathon at the World Road Running Championships. With braids tight to her head, a bright red singlet and her smile full of braces, she stood out in the mass of elite runners waiting for the gun. Once the race began, she also stood out — because she was alone out front.
Within minutes, she had separated from the pack. Halfway through the course, she was nearly half a minute ahead of her closest pursuer. By the time she passed Parken, the city’s main soccer stadium, a quarter-mile gap stretched between her and the closest contender. Agnes ran through the tape after 13.1 miles in 1 hour, 5 minutes and 15 seconds. It was a world record. She raised her arms, clapped her hands and fell to her knees, pounding the ground with her fists.
She wrapped herself in a Kenyan flag and beamed. She leaned over on the podium to accept the gold medal. She held up an oversized check for $50,000, and the cameras clicked and clicked. “After 1 kilometer, I was like, let me try to push the pace, because I saw an opportunity to get the world record,” she said. “When I reached 15 kilometers, I was so happy, because I got the feeling of ‘Let me do this.'”
From a running perspective, Agnes’ future is clear: Marathons are next. She is increasing her distance, pounding those red-clay roads for longer and longer. She has goals: The major races. World Championships. Olympics. More podiums. More medals. More money. “I want to be called two-times world champ, three-times world-record holder,” she said. “I mean, to be on this history book forever.”
She has Joan and Julien and Davor to help her. She has Ruth. She has a quiet room on the second floor of the training camp for as long as she wants.
She is also 25. She is all over social media, loves Instagram and engages often with her followers. She has an apartment in nearby Eldoret where she goes on weekends when she wants to get away from the running grind. She has a boyfriend.
None of it means that something bad will happen to her. But all of it builds on top of the reality: The more she wins, the more people will want to talk to her. The more people will ask her for time or help or money. The more people will tell her they can help her soar even higher if she would just go away from what she knows and come with them. It isn’t enough for a woman to cross the finish line in Kenya; the throng that lies just beyond the tape matters even more.
“I have had moments that I am worried about Agnes, because there are so many people who prey on young girls,” Joan told me. “But we talk every day. I try to guide her. And I hope that she’ll just follow the correct path.”
At times, Agnes laughs about her situation. During one of our earliest conversations, she joked that because of all she endured before having success, if a man should “want me now, it’s a lot of tests — I mean, you need to come with a lot of CV.” She flashed that grin and giggled.
But more often, she is circumspect. She does want love. She does want family. She does want something more, and she knows that for as long as she is competing, she will need to leaven those wants with wariness. She pointed to her head. “I need to be strong in the mind,” she said.
It is an impossible juxtaposition, unfair and unreasonable and unseemly and unimaginable in its stakes. It is also the same one faced by Joan and Mary and Alice-from-the-table-banking and the woman with the baby who called on the phone that chilly night. It is the same one Agnes Tirop and Rebecca Cheptegei considered.
For a woman in Kenya, running fast and far brings incredible opportunity — the chance to raise up a life, a house, a home, a family. Even a village. But it also brings risk, a danger that can’t always be seen but that lies heavy across the back of every woman who steps to the line.
It would be easier for Agnes to stop. It would be simpler for Agnes to stop. It would be safer for Agnes to stop.
She runs anyway.
