{"id":2564,"date":"2025-03-28T15:14:09","date_gmt":"2025-03-28T15:14:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fittedin.org\/fittedinwp\/?p=2564"},"modified":"2025-03-28T15:24:10","modified_gmt":"2025-03-28T15:24:10","slug":"east-african-athletics-murdered-angels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fittedin.org\/fittedinwp\/2025\/03\/28\/east-african-athletics-murdered-angels\/","title":{"rendered":"East-African Athletics\u2019 Murdered Angels<\/strong>"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

(Part One) \u2013 Kenya\u2019s Agnes Tirop<\/strong><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

By Satish Sekar \u00a9 Satish Sekar (March 27th<\/sup> 2025)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vast Promise<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kenya\u2019s 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 26th<\/sup> birthday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She should have had her peak years ahead of her \u2013 she was after all, the women\u2019s world record holder at 10Km when she died on October 13th<\/sup> 2021 \u2013 she had set the mark at Herzogenaurach (Germany) in September 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An Exceptional Talent<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her husband and coach (so-called) Ibrahim Rotich, had other ideas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tirop\u2019s talent was exceptional and that was obvious from an early age \u2013 she was already beating competition twice her age before even entering her teens. Rotich saw Tirop\u2019s 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\u2019s misfortune that Rotich chose her to exploit and abuse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Murder and the Long Wait for Justice<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019s Elgeyo- Marakwet County, a town rich with athletic talent and training opportunities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rotich was quickly suspected of her murder \u2013 there\u2019s no apparent history of his coaching ability either. Former long-distance runner, Simion Biwott, of the Veterans\u2019 Association had never heard of Rotich as a coach, let alone a top coach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Simion Biwott of the Veterans’ Association<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A Judicial Outrage<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rotich\u2019s 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 \u2013 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 \u2013 ever. She deserved a lot better than she got. It was a long battle to get Rotich arrested and to trial.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scandalously, even now, Rotich\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019s trial has been thrown into chaos by his refusal to attend court in February \u2013 an offence that he repeated a week ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kenyan authorities responded to Rotich\u2019s latest no-show in court in Eldoret (in Kenya\u2019s famous Rift Valley) with an order for police to bring him to court on April 8th<\/sup>. The prosecutor, Leonard Okaka, has requested that Rotich forfeit 400,000 Kenyan Shillings, part of the bail sureties he had to provide (just over \u00a32390). 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tirop\u2019s Angels<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tirop\u2019s talent was hers \u2013 only she had the right to benefit from it and choose who to share those benefits with. Among her friends in Kenya\u2019s athletics community is the talented long-distance runner, Joan Chelimo Melli[1]<\/a>. Chelimo is Kenyan-born, but now runs for Romania.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She experienced exploitation by an unscrupulous male partner and so-called coach before rebuilding her life and career.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She helped to establish Tirop\u2019s Angels<\/strong> 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

[1]<\/a> Chelimo\u2019s story and work with Tirop\u2019s Angels will be detailed in future articles here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Part One) \u2013 Kenya\u2019s Agnes Tirop By Satish Sekar \u00a9 Satish Sekar (March 27th 2025) Vast Promise Kenya\u2019s Olympic long [\u2026]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[829,870,882,881,872,871,880,873,878,879],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fittedin.org\/fittedinwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2564"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fittedin.org\/fittedinwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fittedin.org\/fittedinwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fittedin.org\/fittedinwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fittedin.org\/fittedinwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2564"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/fittedin.org\/fittedinwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2564\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2569,"href":"https:\/\/fittedin.org\/fittedinwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2564\/revisions\/2569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fittedin.org\/fittedinwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fittedin.org\/fittedinwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fittedin.org\/fittedinwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}