Kelvin Kiptum was a little ahead of his time – and the stopwatches – early on. In 2009, when he was ten, a group of runners rushed past his home in Chepkorio, on the plateau of the East African Rift Valley that has formed so many runners’ diamonds. So little Kelvin cheekily ran along, and he didn’t let himself be shaken off when the group’s trainer, a certain Gervais Hakizimana, turned the boy away. Year after year the group walked past the Kiptums’ house, year after year the son became bolder – and faster. When Kiptum was 15, Hakizimana once said so, he offered to train him. Presumably not even the coach had any idea at the time that he had come across a future world record holder in his humble circumstances.
Death of marathon world record holder Kelvin Kiptum: The future ends now – Sport
