East-African Athletics’ Murdered Angels

(Part One) – Kenya’s Agnes Tirop

By Satish Sekar © Satish Sekar (March 27^th 2025)

Vast Promise

Kenya’s Olympic long distance athlete Agnes Tirop, only had a short time to demonstrate her immense talent. In 2015 she burst onto the senior scene by winning the IAAF World Cross Country Championships, aged just 19. She was just 25 when she was brutally robbed of her life aged just ten days shy of what would have been her 26^th birthday.

She should have had her peak years ahead of her – she was after all, the women’s world record holder at 10Km when she died on October 13^th 2021 – she had set the mark at Herzogenaurach (Germany) in September 2021.

An Exceptional Talent

Her memory, her family, athletics and Kenya still await justice nearly three-and-a-half years later. She had not only demonstrated the potential that she had, but delivered on it.

Her husband and coach (so-called) Ibrahim Rotich, had other ideas.

Tirop’s talent was exceptional and that was obvious from an early age – she was already beating competition twice her age before even entering her teens. Rotich saw Tirop’s talent as his meal ticket. He, like other male so-called coaches in Kenya, latched on to a talented female athlete to exploit. But Rotich had chosen one of the very best. The world was or should have been at her feet. Instead, tragedy, or evil, overcame her. It was Tirop’s misfortune that Rotich chose her to exploit and abuse.

Murder and the Long Wait for Justice

Tirop was brutally murdered in October 2021. She had been stabbed 25 times in the neck and stomach at her home in Iten, which is located in Kenya’s Elgeyo- Marakwet County, a town rich with athletic talent and training opportunities.

Iten has no produced several famous athletes: Peter Rono, Wilson Boit Kipketer, the great David Rudisha and the phenomenal Marathon runner, Ibrahim Hussein. Iten was an athletics hub of top talent and Tirop was set to shine brightly. Sadly, she shone far too briefly.

Rotich was quickly suspected of her murder – there’s no apparent history of his coaching ability either. Former long-distance runner, Simion Biwott, of the Veterans’ Association had never heard of Rotich as a coach, let alone a top coach.

A Judicial Outrage

Rotich’s trial is still ongoing, or rather it should be and would be had it not been for a judicial outrage. Rotich followed a long-established and cowardly strategy – victim- blaming. From the outset Rotich protested his innocence, which is his right, but his defence included trying to put her morals on trial. She is the victim and that should never be forgotten – ever. She deserved a lot better than she got. It was a long battle to get Rotich arrested and to trial.

Scandalously, even now, Rotich’s trial is far from concluding. Rotich secured bail in November 2023. However, Rotich, now 45, was ordered not to leave the county of Uasin Gishu (Eldoret is in that county). Uasin Gishu is also the county where Tirop was born.

However, he switched off both of his mobile phones and could not be found at his known address. His lawyer, Ngigi Mbugua, told the court that he had no idea where his client was. Rotich’s trial has been thrown into chaos by his refusal to attend court in February – an offence that he repeated a week ago.

Kenyan authorities responded to Rotich’s latest no-show in court in Eldoret (in Kenya’s famous Rift Valley) with an order for police to bring him to court on April 8^th. The prosecutor, Leonard Okaka, has requested that Rotich forfeit 400,000 Kenyan Shillings, part of the bail sureties he had to provide (just over £2390). That is a paltry sum for bail, especially when Rotich had been arrested in 2021 trying to flee the country in order to evade standing trial. It beggars belief that Rotich was granted release on bail after that and was allowed his freedom while on trial.

Tirop’s Angels

Tirop’s talent was hers – only she had the right to benefit from it and choose who to share those benefits with. Among her friends in Kenya’s athletics community is the talented long-distance runner, Joan Chelimo Melli[1]. Chelimo is Kenyan-born, but now runs for Romania.

She experienced exploitation by an unscrupulous male partner and so-called coach before rebuilding her life and career.

She helped to establish Tirop’s Angels to assist female athletes, especially young impressionable girls, to ensure that they know that they have options and how to manage the finances they earn.

Chelimo also wants to establish a refuge for women, especially athletes, to enable them to escape gender-based violence and exploitation before it is too late.

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[1] Chelimo’s story and work with Tirop’s Angels will be detailed in future articles here.