Words by Simon Freeman, Like the Wind editor
Music is pumping out from the mobile DJ system with a joyful insistency. Under the hot Kenyan sun, around 40 women are dancing together in the courtyard. One by one, each person joins a line, at the head of which are three women wearing matching T-shirts. They are the organisers of this event. The line curves anti-clockwise (a nod to the direction of travel around an athletics track, or merely a coincidence?) and the women sway and shuffle their feet in rhythm. When everyone has joined, the front of the line meets the back, forming a circle. Under instruction from one of the organisers, who is holding a microphone, the group stops circling and turns to face inwards. The women are still bouncing on the balls of their feet in time to the music. The rhythm intensifies and the women start to crouch down, still dancing. A couple of them cry out – almost as if they are exalting the others. The woman with the microphone chants in Swahili. The pulsing beats fill the courtyard, reverberating off the surrounding buildings and the high walls of the compound. A couple of the organisers are encouraged into the centre of the circle, where they dance alone for a brief moment as the other women clap and sing.
After five minutes or so, the dancing comes to an end. The women make their way to rows of plastic chairs arranged under a gazebo. The organisers take their seats in a second gazebo facing the main group. One of the organisers – Joan Chelimo – takes the microphone and welcomes the women to the event, part of a programme delivered by an organisation called Tirop’s Angels. Named in honour of a runner whose murder has shaken the running world, Tirop’s Angels is trying to educate the world about the realities of gender-based violence – starting with the women most likely to become victims.
Chelimo hands the microphone to Harriet Musimbi Kigaro, a counselling psychologist from an organisation called Aviva Mental Health Services, who pauses for a moment before asking the group a question:
“Do you know it is possible to be raped in a marriage?”
It is not a rhetorical question. No more than half the women present raise their hands.
A blossoming talent
The evening of 13 August 2021 in the Olympic Stadium in Meiji Jingu Gaien, Tokyo, was hot and humid. As the 15 women about to compete in the 5,000m final jogged out into the stadium, puddles glinted on the edge of the track and the surface glistened with moisture. The dark sky provided a dramatic backdrop for the stadium, decked out in shades of pink and burgundy and flooded with artificial white light. Of course, this being Covid times, barely any of the 60,000 seats were occupied. But the women lined up across the track waved gamely as their names were announced.
Towards the middle of the track a Kenyan athlete with her name – Tirop – emblazoned across her torso, stood right next to the two favourites for the Olympic title: Sifan Hassan and Hellen Obiri.
Agnes Jebet Tirop, 25 years old, looked calm. Ready to race. And she had every right to not feel overawed. In her qualifying race two weeks previously, Tirop had finished in second place, less than one second behind Hassan.
The race played out as predicted by the commentators: a cagey first 10 laps with none of the athletes, except for local runner Ririka Hironaka, willing to push the pace in the hot and humid conditions. With less than a kilometre to go, a rapid acceleration split the field, followed by an all-out sprint for the last 400m. Hassan, who had run a tactically astute race, used her finishing speed to kick away from Obiri – who took silver – and Gudaf Tsegay, who came in third.
In the end, Tirop was perhaps frustrated by her fourth place. But a season’s best time of 14m39.62s in her first Olympic Games was no mean feat. To those watching the race, it was clear that Tirop’s star was on the rise.
But just 61 days later, Agnes Tirop was murdered in her home in Iten, Kenya – allegedly by her husband, 41-year-old Ibrahim “Emmanuel” Rotich.
Tirop went from being a great hope for continued Kenyan distance running dominance to perhaps the most egregious example of a problem that is only now being exposed: gender-based violence in East Africa.
Patriarchy has deep roots
The Tirop’s Angels event in Iten is part of a programme of education that the founders of the organisation believe is crucial in their fight not only to expose the horror of gender-based violence, but to put an end to it. Alongside Joan Chelimo, the board members are Agnes’s fellow athletes – Viola Cheptoo, Mary Keitany and Carolyne Jepkosgei – as well as local teacher Joan Jepkorir Kiprop (also known as Kolly) and Agnes’s father Vincent Tirop.
But the organisation is battling deep-rooted patriarchal attitudes. Viola Cheptoo and her brother (world 1,500m and 5,000m champion Bernard Lagat) have first-hand experience of how gender-based violence is embedded in Kenyan society.
“My dad would come home drunk and he would fight my mum and all of us in the house,” Viola told journalist Euan Crumley in a piece for Athletics Weekly magazine at a Tirop’s Angels event in New York in 2022. “It wasn’t a good experience for me growing up. I feel that somebody should have stood up for my mum, but no one was able to do that because nobody knew better. Everybody thought it was OK and it was all over the place. My neighbour would be screaming and crying for help. Then, the next day, it would be my mum.”
Cheptoo explained that for many women, marriage is a trap. They are told that to leave a marriage – no matter the levels of violence they might face – would be considered a failure on their part. That they would be letting their families down.
The depth of the problem of gender-based violence was hammered home for Cheptoo soon after the formation of Tirop’s Angels, when the topic was broached at a talk organised by the group. “Even for the young men [attending the event], nobody thought that it was a problem,” Cheptoo said. “The guys didn’t even understand what we were talking about when we asked them: ‘Do you understand what gender-based violence is?’ To them, it’s not a big deal.”
Recalling her mother’s experience of violence, Cheptoo said that: “Nobody thinks it is a problem for a man to be hitting a woman. I used to ask my mum: ‘Why is my dad hitting you?’ and she would say: ‘That’s how men discipline women.’ It’s how men are taught by their elders – that if a woman does something wrong, you have to put her in her place. It was taught to me that men use it as a way of controlling women.”
Women are a meal ticket
Gender-based violence in athletics often seems to be perpetuated by men who have pursued young female athletes whom they see as a way to improve their own financial and social status.
This issue was recognised many years ago by one of the most important people in the athletics community in Iten: an Irish priest by the name of Brother Colm O’Connell. Brother O’Connell arrived in Iten as a teacher at St Patrick’s High School during the late 1970s. Before long he started training athletes (despite having no formal coaching experience) and since then Brother O’Connell has guided some of the most successful athletes to have emerged from Kenya, including Lornah Kiplagat, Mary Keitany, Wilson Kipketer and David Rudisha, to name just a few.
In 1989 Brother O’Connell set up a women-only training group. His intention was to create an environment where female athletes could imagine having a career in sports, as well as giving them a starting point on that journey. Brother O’Connell understood that for many women, running was a chance for them to build a career that would provide money, an education and the opportunity to travel.
However, not long after creating the women-only training programme, Brother O’Connell saw that young female athletes were attracting men who saw them as a meal ticket. In the Bloomberg documentary The Murder that Shook the Running World, Brother O’Connell explains: “There are men, if I could use the phrase ‘lurking around’, and they’re prepared to cash in on somebody else’s efforts and energies. They are opportunists. They see this as a way of enhancing themselves, as a way of getting on in life themselves. As you become a successful person, you’re an easy target.”
Just one example of this is Agnes Tirop’s husband, who was 16 years older than her. Soon after he met the schoolgirl, they were married (the exact date of their marriage is contested) and he became her coach and manager.
The freedom to speak out
The courtyard where the Tirop’s Angels event is taking place is part of the Kechei Centre, a facility that welcomes athletes from around the world looking to experience the benefits of training in Iten: the high altitude, the simple way of life, the food and the distance-running culture that permeates the town.
The Kechei Centre is run by Joan Chelimo and her husband, the French athlete Julien Di Maria. For most of the athletes passing through its high metal gates, the Kechei Centre is a place for training, resting and communing with other athletes. But on the day of the Tirop’s Angels gathering, it has become a safe haven where athletes are able to discuss a topic that is considered taboo. Di Maria is clear, though, that the subject must be addressed.
“I think in the mid- to long-term, [openly discussing gender-based violence] will have a positive impact,” says Di Maria, “especially on the younger generation. Because they’re the people you can affect or teach.”
Di Maria goes on to explain that although patriarchal attitudes are deeply embedded, change is possible. He points to young mothers, or even school-age girls, who are seeking help now – something that only a handful of years ago they would not have done.
As an agent who represents athletes, Di Maria has seen the way that growing confidence among women is having an impact: “When I was signing athletes wanting to join our management team five or six years ago,” he explains, “most of the women weren’t speaking at all. Nowadays, I see a change – some of the athletes are willing to speak alone, without their husband being there.”
There’s also a new sense of self-worth among some of the athletes, partly thanks to some structural changes – for example, brands that pay their female athletes directly, rather than into their husbands’ bank accounts. Di Maria says: “They’re saying: ‘Hey, I don’t need to be treated like that. I can do what I want. I can own property myself. I can have my own bank account.’” Small changes, perhaps. But changes nonetheless.
But what will drive bigger changes? For Joan Chelimo, the answer could be delivered via Athletics Kenya, which controls the sport.
“If the federation comes in,” explains Chelimo, “and says that we want certified coaches, so that no husband is coaching, no boyfriend is coaching or whatever, that would be a very good strategy [for reducing the opportunities for abuse].”
Athletics Kenya states on its website that its vision is to: “…be a world-class federation to lead, govern and develop the sport of athletics in all its forms, uniting the athletics family in a spirit of excellence, integrity and solidarity.” But according to Chelimo and others, a much more practical vision would be to implement measures that protect young female athletes striving to get a toehold in the sport in one of the most competitive running environments in the world.
“If the athletics body could introduce laws to protect girls, protect female athletes, that would make a difference,” says Joan. “These organisations could have sessions about making financial decisions. They could teach athletes how to be financially stable. The federation could protect women, even in their marriages.”
Chelimo goes on to say that one practical step Athletics Kenya could implement is a rule ensuring that if a female athlete gets divorced, then whatever she brought into the marriage – certainly financially – remains hers. By removing the possibility that the wealth generated by an athlete could end up in the hands of her spouse, the likelihood of abuse is reduced.
Aside from educating young women and men to try to halt the normalisation of gender-based violence, and pushing authorities to implement measures to protect young female athletes, another important piece of the puzzle is telling the world about what is happening in Kenya and beyond.
Global media outlets are happy to exalt the efforts of the best female runners from Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda and so on. Women such as Faith Kipyegon, Tigst Assefa and Gudaf Tsegay appear in television coverage and on newspaper sports pages. But how often do those same media outlets discuss the issue of the gender-based violence that happens behind the scenes?
The murder of Agnes Tirop was such a horrific event that it did receive media coverage. But in many cases, the root issue of the widespread reality of violence against women remains undiscussed.
This is why some of the women trying to create change are taking matters into their own hands.
Taking a stand
The day of the 2021 New York Marathon was really special. It marked the return of the race after the cancellation of the 2020 edition because of the Covid-19 pandemic; it was the end of a six-week period into which all five of the Marathon Majors had been compressed, and it was the 50th running of the iconic event.
There were some pandemic-related issues, of course. To comply with ongoing restrictions, the number of athletes was limited to 33,000. The runners – all of whom had supplied proof of vaccination or negative Covid-19 test results – were segregated in waves to limit contact. In addition, everyone had to wear a mask, except for during the race.
But the atmosphere among the runners and the crowds out on the streets was jubilant. The weather was perfect – under blue skies streaked with occasional thin wisps of cloud, the temperature was 8°C (46°F) and there was barely a breeze. At 8.40am the gun sounded to signal the start of the elite women’s race and 33 athletes headed off Staten Island, on to the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge towards the flat streets of Brooklyn.
By 18 miles, the large pack leading the women’s race began to disintegrate and Peres Jepchirchir, from Kenya – fresh from her victory at the Tokyo Olympic Marathon – looked set to create history by becoming the first woman to win the Olympic and New York City events in the same year. Viola Cheptoo and Ethiopian Ababel Yeshaneh had stuck with Jepchirchir all the way into the final 1.2 miles in Central Park. But as the three women took the last right turn towards the finish, Jepchirchir kicked hard and pulled away. Her finish (in 2h22m39s) was the second-fastest women’s marathon to date. Five seconds behind her, in the fourth-fastest marathon time achieved by a woman, was Viola Cheptoo.
In interviews after the race, Cheptoo proudly wore the Tirop’s Angels logo on her singlet. Cheptoo dedicated her run, and the silver medal around her neck, to her murdered friend. She made a point of explaining the organisation’s aims and the reason for its existence during many of her post-race interviews. That media coverage was, of course, valuable. But in fact, Jepchirchir and the winner of the men’s race – Albert Korir – also sported the Tirop’s Angels logo on their running tops. However, neither mentioned Agnes Tirop or the organisation that bears her name in any of their interviews.
The lack of support for the organisation is something Joan Chelimo highlighted in an article she wrote for World Athletics:
“When [Tirop] died, I hoped that male athletes in Kenya, particularly those with a big, international platform, would express their sadness and take to social media, calling for an end to such violence.
“But there was silence.
“Our men are still in the culture, and when this happens some men even feel like the woman deserved it. When we started our foundation, our first account was deactivated after being reported by someone who felt that by giving these women knowledge, we were going against marriages.
“That’s what we are up against.
“It’s really sad that we don’t have more men supporting us but, in many of their minds, the woman’s place is still in the kitchen or giving birth and taking care of babies.”
Of course, not all women are in unhappy marriages or live in fear of violence. In an interview conducted last year at the NN Running training camp in Kaptagat – 50km from Iten – Faith Kipyegon talked to me about how her husband has stepped back from his athletics career (he was the 800m bronze medallist at the 2012 Olympic Games in London) to support her and take care of their daughter.
“Well, yes, he supports me a lot,” Faith told me. “For somebody to let you be in camp from Monday through Saturday, it’s not that easy. He’s the person who understands what I do. And he wants the best outcome for me.”
But Agnes Tirop’s case highlights the ways in which women can find themselves in dangerous situations.
Destined for greatness
As a child, Tirop and one of her brothers (she was one of seven children) would run 5km to school and back every day. That sort of base training soon revealed a prodigious talent. By the time Tirop was in high school, she was beating significantly older athletes. Viola Cheptoo recalls meeting Tirop for the first time at a cross-country event. The young girl – still sporting the close-cropped hair that was a requirement of her school’s uniform policy – warmed up in bare feet and raced in normal trainers, not the cross-country spikes worn by most of the other runners. Despite the disadvantages of her youth and lack of appropriate shoes, Tirop won the race.
Soon after – while she was still in high school – Agnes met Emmanuel Rotich. He offered to coach her and she accepted. He may also have given her kit, which for someone from such a poor background was very attractive. After a while, Tirop and Rotich started a romantic relationship – one that she hid from almost everyone, including her parents (she told them Rotich was her driver).
Before long, Rotich convinced Tirop to quit high school and they moved in together – an attempt to isolate the young girl from her family, according to relatives.
It was shortly after they formed a partnership that it appears Rotich started physically abusing Tirop. There are records of several occasions on which Rotich beat Tirop, including one incident where he hit her so hard that she injured her leg and had to go to Italy for treatment.
Despite all this, Tirop was gradually moving up through the ranks of female distance runners, not just in Kenya, but abroad as well. Eventually, after having won many races, Tirop was selected to be part of the Kenyan team that travelled to the Tokyo Olympics.
On her return, it seems as though Tirop was determined to split from her violent husband. She told her brother that she was leaving the marital home and she moved to a training camp in another part of Iten. She also talked to at least one friend – Joan Kiprop (known as Kolly) – in a way that, in hindsight, suggests that she was considering her options.
On 12 September 2021, Tirop broke the world record for a women-only 10km road race at an event in Germany. Three weeks later, she travelled to Geneva in Switzerland for the Giants Geneva 10km race. Kolly and her fiancée – Swiss athlete Julien Wanders – were also at the event.
“Julien and I thought: ‘This is the first edition of this race. Why don’t we go [and] have tea with all the Kenyans that have come? We can show them around Geneva,’” explains Kolly. “I ran that race together with Julien and afterwards the whole Kenyan community came back to Julien’s father’s house. We had tea with the athletes, including Agnes. And we shared stories about the whole experience – because that day, the lady who won the race broke the world record.”
Tirop talked about how she was inspired by coming second to the new world record holder, clearly displaying the scale of her ambitions.
“You could see the fire burning in her,” says Kolly. “That she wants this record. She wanted to be the best in the world.”
After they left Wanders’ father’s house, Tirop got in a taxi with Kolly to head back to the hotel. “When we were in the car, [Agnes] said to me: ‘I think the European culture is quite easy when it comes to divorce. I don’t understand why it is always very difficult to divorce in Kenya.’ I said yes, it looks like it – but not all the situations are easy in Europe. I think sometimes it looks like divorce is easy. But also there are situations that are difficult.”
Kolly could not know at the time, but just 10 days later, after returning to Kenya, Tirop was dead. And it is clear that Kolly feels a sense of guilt for not picking up on why Tirop was talking about the difficulties of getting divorced.
“I think I should have asked the right questions,” says Kolly. “Like: ‘Are you OK with something going on in your life regarding your husband and everything?’”
Fighting for change
Agnes Tirop’s murder turned a floodlight on the issue of gender-based violence in Kenya. But the people behind Tirop’s Angels are keen to point out that the problem is not just limited to one country. Viola Cheptoo says the organisation has received messages – often recounting stories of abuse – from places as far afield as Israel and Chile, as well as other countries in East Africa. Distance-running legend Haile Gebrselassie expressed his support for Tirop’s Angels and added a worrying thought – that unlike in Kenya, the press in his home nation of Ethiopia does not enjoy the freedom to report on issues such as gender-based violence. So it is likely that in Ethiopia, many more athletes (and women in general) are suffering similar abuse, but without the recourse to tell their stories and to try to change their situation.
“[Gebrselassie] told us that Ethiopians are probably going through even worse cases than here in Kenya,” says Cheptoo. “He was telling me a lot of these big athletes who have achieved so much are going through the same.”
But the floodlight is now on and alongside Tirop’s Angels, there are more organisations working to highlight – and eradicate – the issue of violence against women.
One such organisation is called Braveheart Runners. Set up in 2021 by Scottish runner and businessman Alistair Davidson in response to the plight in which many Kenyan athletes found themselves during the Covid-19 pandemic, Braveheart Runners offers scholarships to athletes covering living expenses, physiotherapy, coaching and support to travel to international races, as well as kit from a brand sponsor – Scott – that has made a long-term commitment to the programme.
Braveheart Runners was not specifically set up to tackle gender-based violence or the issues of patriarchy that underpin it. But as the team’s general manager Peter Aburi told me, by providing financial backing to athletes, women are able to train and compete without needing to rely on a man for support. One of the aims of Braveheart Runners is to increase the number of women in the team in order to ensure that more women are able to pursue a career as an athlete without interference from men.
Seventy kilometres south of Iten, a formidable teacher and athletics coach known to everyone as Madam Ruth (full name Ruth Jepchumba Bundotich) guides athletes at the Kamwosor Junior Training Camp in Baringo County. Madam Ruth’s intention is to create a safe space for young female athletes to train and compete. And her athletes have achieved massive success, despite the simplicity of Madam Ruth’s approach and the relatively unknown status of the training camp. One of Madam Ruth’s athletes – Agnes Ng’etich – raced in September 2023 at the Brasov Running Festival in Romania, breaking the women-only world 10km record, in a time of 29m24s. (Ironically, the record Ng’etich broke had been set by Agnes Tirop in 2021.)
In late 2022, world half-marathon championship winner Mary Ngugi opened the women-only Nala Training Camp in Nyahururu Town, east of Eldoret in Kenya. She did this in response to the abuse and exploitation of women by men that she had witnessed as a young athlete training in mixed-gender camps. As she told BBC Sport Africa, she saw first-hand how female athletes were “abused by men, harassed, intimidated, not being able to be themselves”. Ngugi’s camp provides a refuge and ideal training conditions for female athletes between the ages of 14 and 22.
Thanks to safer spaces for women, along with increased awareness of the issue of gender-based violence and athletes, teachers, coaches – and, in some cases, brands – lending their support and voices, it looks as though female athletes in Kenya may have a brighter and safer future.
So much still to do
On 15 November 2023, Justice Robert Wananda at Eldoret High Court in Kenya announced that the murder trial of Agnes Tirop – with her husband Ibrahim Rotich as the only suspect – would commence. At the time, Rotich had been in jail on remand for the previous two years. Judge Wananda granted Rotich bail, saying: “For the past two years, the accused has been detained in prison remand in connection with the murder of his wife. This has been enough (time) to ascertain his character and the environment outside the prison if released. Things have cooled and there appears not to be any danger to his life.”
Although freeing Rotich was a move that surprised and dismayed many of Tirop’s family and friends, the news that the case would begin soon was welcomed. At least Tirop’s loved ones might get the justice they feel she deserved.
In court, Tirop’s younger sister Everlyne Jepngetich – who had been living with Agnes and Rotich – was asked to recall the day of the murder. She said that she had returned from a training session:
“When I entered the house, I saw my sister sitting on the floor,” said Jepngetich, “while her left cheek was swollen from the beating from Rotich, who was standing while holding a wooden stick and who was half-naked.”
Agnes Tirop did not leave the house, seek help or call the police after her husband had attacked her. No one can ever really understand why. Perhaps it says something about the prevalence of gender-based violence in Kenya. But whatever the reasons behind the seriousness of the violence she faced, a few short hours later, Agnes Tirop was dead.
Shining a light on the reality of gender-based violence means more people around the world are aware of the issue, but it doesn’t mean the problem is magically about to disappear. Giving female athletes a voice and a safe space is a start. But Western observers should be mindful that attempting to inspire cultural change has huge colonialist overtones. Women in Kenya and other countries are creating the structures that will help the next generation of female athletes, and need support, whether that’s from brands or heightened awareness of the price that talented runners can end up paying for their success. Agnes Tirop was not the first – and will not be the last – victim of gender-based violence, unless radical change occurs.
This story appeared in LtW#39 which was published in December 2023. It has been republished here in response to the murder of Rebecca Cheptegei on Tuesday 3 September 2024.