An Olympic runner who died after being doused in petrol and set on fire by her former partner is due to be buried today with full military honours.
Rebecca Cheptegei was killed just three weeks after her final race at Paris 2024 at the hands of her former boyfriend, Dickson Ndiema Marangach.
She had returned to her home in the highlands of western Kenya – an area popular with international runners for its high altitude training facilities – when she was attacked as she walked back from church with her two daughters and younger sister, her family said.
She suffered burns to 80% of her body and succumbed to her injuries four days later.
“I don’t think I am going to make it,” she told her father while being treated in hospital, he said.
“If I die, just bury me at home in Uganda.”
And so her body was flown home, one final time.
Rebecca Cheptegei in action during the women’s marathon final at the World Athletics Championship in Budapest in 2023. Pic: Reuters
Paris plans to honour runner
Her death has sparked outrage over the high levels of violence against women in Kenya, particularly in the athletics community. The athlete is the third elite runner to have allegedly died at the hands of a romantic partner since 2021 in Kenya.
Female athletes in Kenya are at high risk of exploitation and violence by men drawn to their prize money.
Ms Cheptegei’s sporting successes included winning the 2021 World Mountain and Trail Running Championships in Thailand, and a year later earning first place in the Padova Marathon in Italy and setting a national record for the marathon.
Family members mourn and react next to the coffin of the dead Olympian. Pic: Reuters
Born in eastern Uganda in 1991, she met Marangach during a training visit to Kenya, later moving to the country to pursue her dream of becoming an elite runner.
According to a police report, the pair had argued over a piece of land Ms Cheptegei had bought in Kenya.
Marangach was accused of killing Ms Cheptegei
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Marangach died a few days after Ms Cheptegei, from burns allegedly sustained during the attack, dividing opinion among the local running community.
“Justice really would have been for him to sit in jail and think about what he had done,” said marathon runner Viola Cheptoo, co-founder of Tirop’s Angels, a support group for athletes facing domestic violence in Kenya.
The circumstances of Ms Cheptegei’s death shocked the world, but her name may yet inspire future athletes, with the French capital planning to name a sports facility in her honour.
“She dazzled us here in Paris. We saw her. Her beauty, her strength, her freedom,” the city’s mayor Anne Hidalgo told reporters. “Paris will not forget her.”
