Rest in Peace to the Boy from Chepsamo Village

Photo by Peter Baxter

Words by Jeff Merrill

After the Chicago Marathon last Fall, I started writing a piece on the stature of Eliud Kipchoge and how the legend surrounding him might shift after his world record was broken and he would likely not get it back. I don’t like to make speculative statements because the beauty of sport is its undecided nature- that the end result lies in the hands of the individual to decide their fate, or at least have the capacity to strive to.

But the man who broke Kipchoge’s world record did it in a fashion that all but promised greater performances. It was not a stretched effort on a perfect day. He glided through the streets of Chicago completing the second half in under 60 minutes, faster than his first half. He ran 2:00:35. In the press conference after the race, he said he felt in control the whole time. He was 23 years old then.

It was his third marathon ever. The slowest he ever ran was his first, which he finished in 2:01:53- at the time, the fifth fastest ever. All but one of the current top 10 athletes ever to run the marathon have run their best times in the past 3 years. Kiptum was 3 years younger than the next youngest man on the list.

His future seemed intertwined with the distance.

In the context of his untimely death, facts and figures feel reductive. People are more than their results. We did not even get a chance to know him. What might he become?

How would he grow? What would be his voice and how would it reach the millions who run the marathon?

We know he was fearless because we believed he was.

The story goes that he came to the marathon without a contract with the promise that if he delivered, he would get one. He did.

In comparison to how many know of him, a few knew him, as is for all of us- how he was on the easy jogs, chatting and laughing in the pack on the dirt roads, what he was like in the calm and quiet, lounging after dinner and before bed, when causal thought leads to meandering conversations about dreams that become so palpable they exist when you close your eyes.

The world record will be broken again, and for a long time, until the current generation of fans who watched him begin to fade into the past, records will be compared to what Kelvin Kiptum might have become.

The rocks and trees and birds on his daily routes will not see him again.

Rest in peace to the boy from Chepsamo Village.