Four women runners brutally killed in Kenya: ‘It’s no longer safe for any athlete’

Rebecca Cheptegei loved chickens. She reared them and collected their eggs each morning. Her family would gently joke she loved them too much.

“She was always laughing,” says her mother, Agnes. “You always knew when she was home.”

Cheptegei had a chicken coop wherever she lived. Earlier this year, she built a house in the Kenyan village of Kinyoro, funded by her recent success — she won the World Mountain Running Championships in 2022, and finished second in last year’s Florence Marathon.

That championship feeling for Rebecca Cheptegei 🇺🇬🏆✨

She’s crowned queen of the Classic Up & Down at the #WMTRC in #AmazingThailand 👑

Silver 🥈 for Annet Chemengich Chelangat 🇺🇬, and bronze 🥉 for Allie McLaughlin 🇺🇸

📺 Coverage continues: https://t.co/avnwwjCLMO pic.twitter.com/DEmModzZtU

— wmtrc2021thailand (@wmtrc2021th) November 6, 2022

On the afternoon of September 1, while Cheptegei was at church, her estranged partner Dickson Ndiema Marangach lowered himself inside the coop, with its solid wooden walls. When she returned, she went outside to check on her flock, given the light drizzle.

As Cheptegei approached, Marangach burst out the coop and threw petrol in her eyes. While she stumbled, he used the jerry can to soak the rest of her body — and set her alight.

Her 17-year-old sister Dorcas ran out to help, clawing at Cheptegei’s black jacket, her finest church wear, but fled after being threatened by Marangach’s machete.

“I can’t forget it,” says Dorcas. “I keep dreaming of her calling for help.” Watching on inside were Cheptegei’s daughters from a previous marriage, 12-year-old Joy and Charity, nine.

Cheptegei ran to the front lawn, but with Marangach trailing behind, no neighbours came to help. As she collapsed onto the grass, Marangach walked over, and emptied the rest of the petrol onto her. He seriously burnt himself in the process.

By the time help came, the only parts of Cheptegei which had not been covered with either second or third-degree burns were her forearms and shins.

“Mama, why was there no one there to save me?” she wept to her pastor, Caroline Atieno, in hospital that evening.

For the first 24 hours, Cheptegei was able to speak and describe the attack. Before being transferred to a larger hospital in the Kenyan city of Eldoret, she raised hopes of survival by pulling herself into a wheelchair. The next day, Atieno kept vigil at the nearby Mount Bethel, where the pair had prayed before the Olympics.

Cheptegei worsened over the coming days. Her tongue swelled, blocking her airways. One by one, her organs began to shut down.

“I went to see her in intensive care,” says Kenyan athlete Violah Lagat. “And I made a bad decision visiting that day, because it has never left me. I’ve been having nightmares about how she looked. She went through all the struggles of life and made it. She was an Olympian. And it was taken from her.”

While she could still speak, Cheptegei repeated two things in Swahili.

“Why couldn’t Dickson have seen one good thing in me, so he wouldn’t have done this?”

“Who will look after my children?”

She died four days after being attacked, aged 33.

The hospital announced that Marangach had died of his own burns on September 10.

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On November 3, Kenyan athletes finished 1-2-3 in the New York City Marathon. The previous month, in Chicago, Ruth Chepngetich became the first woman to run under two hours and 10 minutes, obliterating the world record by nearly two minutes.

The majority of Kenyan runners train in the town of Iten, near Eldoret. It lies above the Great Rift Valley on an escarpment a mile and a half high, the thin air and web of trails producing a regular stream of Olympic medallists. In Kenya, it has been named “the home of champions”. In recent years, it has become known for something else.

Cheptegei’s family have hung a banner on their living room wall. It reads “Fighting for Victims of Femicide” and lists four names.

Rebecca Cheptegei. Though she was born in and competed for Uganda, she had lived in Kenya since the age of two.

Damaris Muthee Mutua — strangled in Iten in April 2022. Born in Kenya, she represented Bahrain internationally. The police named her boyfriend Eskinder Folie as the chief suspect but he fled across the border to his native Ethiopia and attempts to capture him have been unsuccessful.

Edith Muthoni — murdered in October 2021. The 27-year-old sprinter also worked as a wildlife protection officer. Her husband was charged in relation to her death in 2022 and the case is ongoing.

Agnes Tirop — stabbed to death in the same week as Muthoni, a month after breaking the 10,000m world record in Germany. Her husband and coach, Ibrahim Rotich, confessed to beating her in a heated argument and then pleaded not guilty to her murder. This case is also ongoing.

“She was a pure talent,” says Janeth Jepkosgei, a former 800m world champion and Olympic silver medallist, of Tirop. “She could have been an Olympic champion. She could have done great things in the marathon.”

Though the legal process is at a different stage in all four cases, there is an apparent pattern: each woman athlete was killed after a financial dispute involving their partner. Speaking to athletes around Iten, everyone worries that they will not be the last.

Jepkosgei is now one of Kenya’s best coaches, working predominantly with junior athletes, and witnesses the issues daily.

“We don’t want to bury more ladies, but the same things keep happening,” she says. “It’s no longer safe for any athlete, actually, especially when they’re starting a relationship. We feel scared as women.”

She is alluding to a system of control that is well-known throughout Kenyan running.

“There are these guys who go hunting for these girls who are talented, and then they pretend to be coaches,” explains Lagat, whose brother, Bernard, won two world championship gold medals competing for the USA.

“Ninety per cent of the time, us athletes come from very vulnerable backgrounds. Our parents don’t have enough money or enough food, they aren’t able to provide sanitary towels for the girls. Those men will initially provide that.”

Athletics in Kenya is a route out of poverty. The New York City Marathon prize money is $100,000, fifteen times a Kenyan’s average annual salary, but even performing well in local races can provide a comfortable lifestyle. Around 30 female runners earn more than $100,000 each year, in a nation where one-third of the population live below the poverty line. With the majority of athletes from poorer, rural backgrounds, they invariably will have never handled such large sums of money.

“In many cases, these men are gradually grooming or manipulating someone to put all their trust in them,” adds Lagat. “Then the control takes place — how they’re training, who they’re seeing, what they do with their earnings.”

“I call them vultures,” says Wesley Korir, winner of the 2012 Boston Marathon, and later a politician. “They look at them (women athletes) as an investment. The relationship is not out of love, these girls feel stuck, they’re trying to survive. For me, I feel like it’s slavery.”

When The Athletic visited Iten, many athletes — some speaking anonymously owing to fear of repercussions — reported further examples of gender-based violence, including domestic abuse, sexual assault, abduction, and feeling pressure to take performance-enhancing drugs. The response of authorities has also been questioned.

Lagat has trained in Iten for most of her adult life, and had grown close to Tirop, six years her junior. After her friend’s death, she resolved to bring change.

“The violence has gone from our grandmothers to our mothers,” she explains. “Agnes was younger than me. If we didn’t take a step, it’ll go all the way to our grandchildren as well.”

She co-founded Tirop’s Angels alongside fellow athlete Joan Chelimo, a domestic abuse charity run by current athletes which provides counselling and safe havens, as well as advice for athletes who suspect they are being exploited.

According to the charity, three-quarters of the women they support have contemplated suicide because of their situation.

On the day we meet, Lagat needs to leave early, rushed out to an emergency call of an athlete in distress. In recent months, the charity experienced a man trying to climb over an electric fence to reach one of the athletes they were harbouring. It was not out of the ordinary.

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To get to Cheptegei’s family home, you take the highway from Eldoret, in Kenya’s far west, towards the gateway town of Kitale. It is near the Ugandan border, over which her parents fled ethnic violence in the early 1990s. From Kitale, it is a smaller road to the tiny village of Endebess, before a three-mile climb up a packed dirt trail into the shadows of Mount Elgon.

These roads are good for training — soft for the knees, undulating for the legs and high for the lungs. Cheptegei’s brother Jacob — an 18-year-old with a 5,000m personal best of 14 minutes flat, faster than this year’s world-leading junior time — leads the way.

Joy and Charity live with the family now, joining Cheptegei’s parents and siblings across four adobe huts and two acres of land, on which they grow cabbages, plantain, and yams.

“Once we were 13, but now we are 12,” says Cheptegei’s father, Joseph. “She (Rebecca) dreamed of buying us another two acres, of building a permanent home. But that has disappeared.”

Cheptegei was spotted as a talented runner at seven. She opted to represent Uganda after missing out on a Kenya junior camp, and was supported in her training by the country’s army. After a short period in Uganda, she moved back to Kenya for the superior training facilities. There, she met Marangach.

“Dickson wasn’t a talented athlete,” says her close friend Emmanuel Kimutai. “He was a boda-boda man (a motorcycle taxi driver), but pretended to be a coach. He was looking for an opportunity.

“He started by escorting the runners with his motorcycle, carrying drinks, but when he realised Rebecca wasn’t in a relationship, he took advantage. He told Rebecca a lot of lies, but I think she wanted companionship. We eventually found out he was with three ladies at the time.”

The issues began when Cheptegei decided to buy her own motorcycle to take Joy and Charity to school. According to the family, Marangach said he would arrange it — and paid for it with Cheptegei’s money — but registered the bike in his name. When Cheptegei complained, Marangach threatened her.

“He keep repeating the same warnings to Rebecca,” says Agnes. “He said he’d maim her ears, maim her nose, maim her genitals.”

On one occasion, Jacob borrowed the motorbike, with his sister’s permission, for a race in Uganda. He says he was chased down by Marangach and three of his friends and had to flee, hiding in a eucalyptus tree to avoid being beaten. Marangach then reported him to the police.

All the while, Cheptegei was winning money from races — more than $50,000 each year.

“Dickson would see the money coming into the bank account, and he had a PIN code,” says Joseph. “He’d spend it how he wanted. Rebecca was uncomfortable with that, and so in April (2024) she went to the bank to change the number.

“After realising Rebecca had done this, Dickson came home in a fury with a machete. Her phone was charging, and he slashed at it with a machete. She ran away from the house in Kinyoro and reported it to the police.”

They say another unprovoked attack took place soon after, when he knocked her out with a punch to her cheek.

“Dickson would tell her she couldn’t go anywhere to get justice, because he said a police officer in Kinyoro was family,” Joseph adds. “He said he would only lose a little, but if Rebecca complained, she would lose everything she has.”

Her most important asset was the house in Kinyoro, built strategically between her parents and the training bases of Iten and Eldoret. Joseph points to a framed photo on the wall, of Rebecca standing proudly in front of her new home.

“You see this house? This is why Rebecca was killed,” he says.

By the spring, Cheptegei and Marangach had separated as a couple, yet he continued to insist the plot was in his name, bringing his new partner to the house and refusing to leave. The police detained him, but he was back within a month, this time attempting to change the locks.

“Rebecca couldn’t even take the kids to school that day,” says Joseph. “She called the police at Kinyoro again, but the officer said he was tired of all the complaints at this homestead, and that he didn’t want to hear any more of their domestic argument.”

When asked about the handling of Cheptegei’s case, Jeremiah ole Kosiom, county commander of Trans Nzoia police, said in a phone call: “As a senior officer, no reports reached me from my juniors. The investigation is ongoing.”

This was just before the Olympics, at which Cheptegei finished 44th in the marathon.

“She wasn’t sleeping at home,” says Agnes. “She was fearful for her life. She couldn’t perform because she was so worried about Dickson.”

Cheptegei managed to get the case into the justice system, with the aim of ultimately settling the ownership question. According to her family, the weekend she was attacked, Marangach was unsuccessfully chasing signatures for his own documentation. He then went to a small filling station in Endebess, and bought petrol.

Before her relationship with Marangach, Cheptegei had been briefly married in Uganda to Joy and Charity’s father.

After her death, Joseph reconnected with his daughter’s ex-husband to enquire whether his grandchildren could benefit from land in Uganda she had bought them. He was told that it had already been sold.

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Back in Iten, others followed what had happened in Kinyoro in horror. They had been here before.

“When Rebecca Cheptegei died in the same way as Agnes, I was in so much pain,” says Martin Tirop, Agnes’s brother. “I wanted to go and view her body when she was pronounced dead. But when I woke up in the morning, I didn’t have my courage anymore. I was traumatised from what came before.”

Just one month before she died, Tirop had broken the 10,000m world record in the small Bavarian town of Herzogenaurach. When she returned from Germany, she was killed.

Martin still lives in the compound in Iten which Tirop built with her winnings. As one of Kenya’s most successful female athletes, she typically earned more than $100,000 each year. Sitting in the dimly-lit living room, he points to a door.

“That’s where we found her,” he says.

That morning, October 13, no one had heard from Tirop for 24 hours. After police sawed through the compound gates, Martin was boosted on a family member’s shoulders, allowing him peer into a locked bedroom. There, he saw his sister’s dead body, lying in the doorway in pool of blood.

Tirop’s husband, Rotich, was around 15 years her senior and worked as her coach despite a lack of formal qualifications. Rotich pleaded not guilty to her murder, claiming he was provoked. Pre-trial testimonies are being gathered at Eldoret’s High Court, ahead of a full trial next year.

Tirop’s family outline how Rotich sought to cut off her support networks.

“Agnes just disappeared from school,” her father Vincent told the court. “Since she was 18 years old, the police said there was nothing they could do about it.”

Her sister Eve testified in court that she had seen Tirop being beaten and crying on the floor. On her return from the Tokyo Olympics in August, it was said Agnes was so afraid she went to stay with her mother, though eventually moved back in with Rotich in Iten.

Early on October 12, Tirop’s sister, who lived nearby, told the court she heard screaming and quarrelling at 5am. She said that Rotich gave her 1,000 Kenyan shillings ($7.70; £6.10) that morning to buy meat, insisting she left the house on the errand. When she returned, the gates were locked and she said her sister’s phone was off. Twenty-four hours later, and still without contact, police were summoned to break down the door.

An autopsy found Agnes had been stabbed four times in the neck and hit with a garden hoe. She was 25.

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“The problems come when we trust too much in the wrong partner,” says marathon world-record holder Chepngetich. “When we’re tired, we can’t do everything by ourselves. We need help, and that’s when they take advantage — taking our properties, other things as well. And maybe then there can be violence.”

Kenya’s best runners are predominantly Kalenjin, the nation’s third-largest tribe. Traditionally, they are taught that the man is the head of the household — which is why many purchase properties in the man’s name, even if it is funded with the woman athlete’s money.

“You know, most of those female athletes who make it, actually own nothing,” says Tirop’s brother Martin. “Everything is in their husband’s name. There is nothing on record and they need to be protected.”

“My husband has taken firm control of my two petrol stations and proceeds from agricultural land, and I can’t earn from them,” Vivian Cheruiyot, a 5000m gold medallist at the 2016 Olympics, told Kenyan newspaper The Standard last year. “I don’t even know where the title deeds are. I want my property to be safe for the future of my children.” Her husband denies the allegations.

“Men need to learn they are supposed to be the one contributing, rather than using the female to succeed,” says Mary Keitany, a three-time winner of both the New York and London marathons. According to the Gates Foundation, across Kenya, women in rural communities do 50 per cent more labour, but make 80 per cent less income.

According to government research from 2022, around 40 per cent of Kenyan women aged between 15 and 39 have suffered physical abuse in their lifetime.

Chelimo Saina runs a domestic abuse support group through her and her husband’s charity, Shoe4Africa, and still competes for Kenya in masters athletics. A Kalenjin, she points to parts of her tribe’s culture as a factor.

“For men, circumcision at 15 to 17 is a big rite of passage,” she explains. “They’re expected to show no pain. But in the more traditional ceremonies, when they’re taught how to treat a woman, they’re told that occasionally beating a woman is OK. There are the same attitudes in wedding songs. Us women are taught to persevere.”

The abuse can also be sexual. In 2019, a government survey reported that one in six Kenyan women had experienced sexual violence before they turned 18.

“There are so many cases with the girls,” says Jepkosgei. “I deal mostly with Under-20 athletes, and whenever we tour around the country, we realise so many things have happened. I’ve had to rescue girls from some regions. There are so many abortions being done.” Abortion is banned in Kenya unless it is a medical emergency or proved as a product of rape.

Selina Kogo, known affectionately by athletes as ‘Shosh’ (grandmother), works as Tirop’s Angels’ counsellor. Even after almost two decades in this space, some cases shock her — such as that involving a junior international medallist, aged 13 and her so-called coach.

“The problem came during massages,” she says. “He told her that sex is part of the massage, and because she was just an innocent little girl, she thought that if the boss said it was normal, it was normal. He was the one who sent money and sugar home. Within a year, she got pregnant, at the age of just 14 or 15.”

In Kenya, the age of consent is 18. Sex with a minor is considered “defilement” and, in this case, could have been punished by at least 20 years imprisonment if convicted. The assault was never reported.

“She couldn’t run and went home, and then the poverty started,” says Kogo. “But she decided to give running one more shot, with her mother looking after the baby.

“Then another coach came into her life making promises. He offered to help her move to Iten, he proposed to her. She got pregnant again. Within six months he disappeared. She’s still 17, too young to work, and is so demoralised she can’t run.”

Unregulated massage parlours like these are not uncommon in Iten.

“So many girls are sexually violated because they go for a massage before a race and say they have 300 shillings (a few dollars or pounds),” says Lagat. “Then they are told, ‘No, it is 500′ — but if you’re preparing for a race and this is your shot, you can avoid the extra 200 if you do something else.”

That ‘something else’ may also include doping. According to the World Anti-Doping Authority, 44 per cent of positive tests for EPO come from Kenya. With the high levels of coach-partner exploitation, desperate to maximise income, the incentive to gain an unfair advantage is obvious.

“I know two runners where their husbands were the ones helping them get the drugs,” says Saina. “It’s whatever makes them win. And of course, they’re using the athlete’s money to source this.”

Athletics Kenya president Jackson Tuwei acknowledges the likely connection.

“We have started an enhanced anti-doping programme, and want to register all our coaches so we know who is a real coach and who isn’t,” he told The Athletic. “One of the recommendations is to increase the number of female coaches, and that will also help address the gender violence issue.

“A well-trained coach would not do the things we’re hearing about — we want to eliminate those who aren’t.”

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Athletics is big business in Kenya — and the question of who is responsible for what is happening to women athletes is a pertinent one.

“In the year she died, (Agnes) reported what happened to Athletics Kenya, but nobody helped her,” says Martin Tirop. “Athletics Kenya and the government raise so much money through athletics. They need to protect female athletes.”

Other athletes, remaining anonymous to protect their position within the team, criticised the body for failing to release a report they say was promised to them in the aftermath of Tirop’s murder, and have also questioned a male dominance on the executive committee (13 men and five women).

Senior officials at Athletics Kenya have acknowledged that they needed to make significant changes to their protocols after her death, based on recommendations from World Athletics, the sport’s global governing body.

“(Gender-based violence) has continued to happen at a rate we cannot accept,” says Tuwei. “For this to happen, and to particularly happen to a top athlete, it’s very painful, and so we decided that we cannot accept this kind of thing. But we know it’s happened again and again thereafter.”

Athletics Kenya introduced several new policies this year, including a six-person panel — four women and two men — where gender-based violence and other safeguarding issues can be reported. A new office has opened in Eldoret, far closer to the athletes than Nairobi, which also offers support.

Others think some agents should be more aware of the difficulties faced by their athletes.

“In Kenya, we have the problem that there is no relationship with the athlete,” Korir says. “They see you as a money maker, not a person. As long as you are running well, they don’t care how you live.”

After Tirop’s death, the Athletics Integrity Unit — founded by World Athletics to address issues of ethical misconduct — contacted her agent, former Italian runner Gianni Demadonna. Court documents from last month show he was aware of some issues, with his assistant Joseph Chepteget testifying: “Gianni told me to calm to down her composure and mental situation because she was distracted as she was fighting with Ibrahim.”

Demadonna, contacted by Swedish Radio last year, defended himself by saying Tirop had asked him to stay out of her personal life.

Speaking to female athletes in Iten, many are also fearful that suspected abusers will not ever have to face justice.

Mutua’s alleged killer has still not been caught. Rotich is on bail — paying a bond of just 400,000 Kenyan shillings (around $3,000) for his freedom.

“Having been in custody for about two years, the accused ought now to be allowed his liberty,” wrote Justice Wananda Anuro in his bail judgement. Although he is barred from Iten, several athletes have expressed distress that Rotich is living in Eldoret.

“And you know the money to pay for the lawyer?” says Jepkosgei. “That’ll be Agnes’ money.”

Policing standards have also been criticised.

“It’s not like Europe or North America,” says Lagat, describing her difficulty in finding safe houses for athletes at Tirop’s Angels. “The police officers in Iten, for someone in crisis, will say, ‘OK, can you come to the office’ or, ‘We don’t have fuel — can you pay for us to come?’

“I have to pay the police and the local chief to protect my women, or act aggressively with the perpetrator,” says Saina bluntly. “It’s going to happen again, because nothing is being done.”

A police spokesperson for Uasin Gishu County insisted all cases are investigated, but stated they often found that athletes did not follow up their complaints, and claimed many incidents are settled without needing police intervention.

Cheptegei’s family live in the neighbouring county of Trans-Nzoia. They point out that she was actively seeking police assistance, and say she reported Marangach on multiple occasions. 

“Rebecca would not have died if the police acted,” Joseph says. “My daughter complained continuously. Nothing was done.”

Jeremiah ole Kosiom, county commander of Trans-Nzoia police, said in response: “The investigation is ongoing, led by the DCI (detective chief inspector), and if the family are not comfortable with the results of the investigation, they can appeal.”

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“Komesha, komesha,” is the chant from over 200 athletes. “Enough is Enough.”

“You have to prove you’re the home of champions,” ends president Tuwei’s speech, to applause.

On November 9, two months after Cheptegei’s death, Athletics Kenya held a day of workshops focused on ending gender-based violence.

Staff pass out numbers of safeguarding officers, and define and explain grooming and psychological abuse. There are lessons on how to handle personal finances, highlighting the Matrimonial Property Act. Coaches were also given warnings — no underage female athletes were ever to be alone with a male trainer, and a no touching policy was now in place across the board.

“Be careful,” says Elizabeth Keitany, the body’s head of safeguarding, during one talk. “You don’t know if somebody is a monster or a human being.”

Other preventative initiatives have also been springing up. Tirop’s Angels and Shoe4Africa are both fundraising for safe houses, the latter to include a mushroom farm, run by its occupants, which it is hoped, will eventually pay for itself outside of donations. Korir runs a school predominantly for talented teenage athletes, Transcend Academy, which aims to remove the opportunity for predatory coaches.

“Before you start winning races, you’re struggling because you have to feed yourself, you have to look for shoes, it’s all on your own,” he explains. “I used to sleep outside, I used to dig latrines and septic tanks. But girls don’t have that luxury — we need to give them a place to develop independently with no strings attached, where opportunists can’t make false promises.”

Brother Colm O’Connell, a 78-year-old Irishman who moved to Iten in 1976, has become known as ‘the godfather of Kenyan running’ for his work with athletes including double Olympic and world champion David Rudisha, Jepkosgei, and Cheruiyot. He ensures a 50-50 split of boys and girls at St Patrick’s High School, Iten, insisting on the importance of mixed groups and mutual understanding.

“We need to be more proactive than reactive,” he says. “It’s how to interact and behave towards each other, and that starts from day one. Athletics Kenya can’t solve it on their own, Tirop’s Angels can’t stop it on their own. It has to be absolutely combined.

“We do have very solid relationships, we do have husbands supporting their talented wives in the athletics world. I want to spread the good news about Kenya. But the day you stop fighting against this situation is the day you’ve completely lost.”

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Back at the Cheptegei’s home, the rain is threatening to block the roads and Jacob has training the next day; Thursday morning intervals, the toughest session of the week.

Rebecca recognised her brother’s talent and passed on tips.

“She’d always tell me I needed to eat after sessions or my body would get weak,” he says. “Ugali, eggs, chicken, of course, even chapati and tea.”

Jacob dips his head, bashful.

“When it gets hard, I just remember her telling me push on, even when the body says it can’t,” he says.

The suffering is visible. Since the attack, Charity has been too traumatised to return to school, but will try again after the holidays. She whispers that she wants to be an English teacher when she grows up. Rebecca’s oldest daughter, 12-year-old Joy, is also talented and clearly a fast runner.

The family hope Joy will become an athlete. They also hope Kenya will change before she does.

(Additional reporting: James Gitaka)

(Top photos: Jacob Whitehead/The Athletic; design: Eamonn Dalton)