The Haunting “What If…” Of Kelvin Kiptum

Feb. 11 marks the one year anniversary of the death of Kelvin Kiptum—the single biggest loss of talent perhaps in sports history—at a moment when the runner seemed poised to alter our understanding of the marathon. 

Kiptum was just 24 when the Toyota he was driving lost control on a rural road near Kaptagat, Kenya, skidded into a ditch and collided with a tree. He and his coach Gervais Hakizimana, who was in the passenger seat, were found dead at the scene when police arrived.

This horrible accident has irreparably damaged the lives of his family, friends and teammates he trained with, sent his home country into a national state of mourning, and stirred up ugly conspiracy theories that have paralyzed elite careers and changed the course of running history.

And, one year later, Kiptum’s death now functions as a black hole at center of the history of distance running.

We are cursed with witnessing only his steep upward trajectory. His performance sheet is troublingly unblemished. He disrupted our understanding of an elite marathoner’s career, beginning at the top, somehow winning three of the biggest marathons in the world. And then he vanished on a Sunday night in rural Kenya.

What could have become of Kelvin Kiptum? 

When Kiptum died he was (and remains) the marathon world record holder, having run 2:00:35 at the 2023 Chicago Marathon. That performance represents the bittersweet capstone of the most impressive beginning of a distance running career ever—more of a starting point than an apex, even though he’d already achieved what no one had previously done.

And Kiptum’s death triggers the single most troubling “what if” scenario in sports history.

Kiptum’s rise was remarkable and truly unprecedented. He seemingly came out of nowhere, and made a huge international splash in his first marathon in December 2022. Either by accident, good fortune or craftiness, he chose Valencia as his for his debut. That race’s reputation was ascending just as Kiptum entered the scene. The course is flat, the weather ideal for marathoning, and the event was not quite as closed to newcomers as one of the more in-demand races like London or Berlin.

Typically, elite distance runners move up gradually to the marathon, first proving themselves on the B-circuit before graduating to the Majors. Even the great Eliud Kipchoge, who had a significant and impressive international career on the track before pivoting to the road, started by running the Frankfurt Marathon, which is not considered a top-level event (although a very good one). Even when Kipchoge ran his first world-class marathon in Berlin in 2013 he was not the headliner and only came in second, finishing just behind the then world record setting Wilson Kipsang. (Kipsang was later suspended for doping related offences). 

No one knew who Kelvin Kiptum was when he belligerently discarded a world-class field 30K into the race. He was just 21 years old, extremely young for a marathoner of any ability level, and had raced only a couple of middling road races before making his debut in Spain. Novice marathoner are supposed to crumble at that critical juncture in the race. Kiptum decided to run faster.

His first attempt at the distance was brash and seemingly ignorant of the reputation of the legendary peril of racing 26.2 miles. Running great Bill Rodgers once said that “the marathon will humble you.” Kiptum crushed a field of the highest calibre of marathoners seemingly by sheer will (and, it was latter revealed, a shocking amount of training). He humbled the marathon distance that day, winning in 2:01:53. It was easily the fastest debut in history, and the third fastest run of all time.

It made no sense. We needed to know more—to see more—of Kelvin Kiptum.

Less than six months later, he followed that by performing on arguably the world’s biggest stage by winning his first marathon major in London. Again, the time was shocking—2:01:25—edging ever so closer to the world record and setting a new course mark in London. 

Most impressively (and under-reported) was that in London Kiptum became the first person in history to run a sub-60 minute second half of a marathon, showing profound self-confidence. It also hinted that he’d unlocked something not previously understood by any marathoner in history. He seemed destined to break the two-hour barrier.

That fall, Kiptum won Chicago and became the first person to ever run under 2:01 and edge closer to a sub-two hour marathon for the first time in history. (Eliud Kipchoge did run 1:59:40 in 2019 at a test event in Vienna, but the performance didn’t officially count as a world record because it wasn’t performed on a legitimate course and used unsanctioned strategies.) 

It is the single greatest marathon run in history. And it became Kiptum’s epitaph.

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Judged on time alone, Kiptum’s last race is extraordinary; but how he did it is breathtaking and feels somehow underrated. It’s worth watching some of the full video replay of the broadcast (embedded above). Kiptum dared the group to stay with him, and by 8K only one other runner, Daniel Mateiko, stayed with him. After the halfway point, Kiptum ran too fast for his pacers to keep up, but unconcerned, he continued to push, a man possessed. Mateiko finally faded away at 30K (and eventually quit the race). That left the 23-year-old Kiptum to do what, in retrospect, felt like he perhaps was, in a sense, doing all along: running the race all alone.

When the broadcast breaks away for a commercial in the above video, the international feed stays fixed on him. With no broadcasters trying to fill the dead air, all we hear is the ambient sound of Kiptum breathing heavily and working extremely hard as he forcefully flicks his Alphafly 3s.

He was running the marathon fundamentally differently than ever before. He was attacking it, hacking and thrashing through the distance as if it were a cross-country race rather than a methodically doled out effort, which had historically been the strategy of successful elite marathon runners.

Eliud Kipchoge has become famous for aphoristically saying that there are “no limits to human potential” and “nothing is impossible.” But it was Kelvin Kiptum who actually realized that in Chicago with the marathon. 

Kiptum’s death means that we will never know what kind of career he could have had. Of course, on the one hand he may have experienced a sophomoric slump or reached too far too soon in his fourth or fifth marathon. He could have perhaps revealed himself to be merely mortal after all. Or perhaps he would have gone on a historic run similar to that of Eliud Kipchoge.

At the time of his death, Kiptum was seen as the natural heir apparent to Kipchoge, who has won more significant marathons than anyone in history. At his peak, Kipchoge was seen as unbeatable, and for seven years was just that, while also setting the world record and winning back-to-back Olympic marathons in 2016 and 2021. In that time, Kipchoge carried distance running on his back, by running the first sub-two hour marathon in history and becoming the first true superstar of the sport.

Kipchoge attained a rare status in sport, and is perhaps only rivalled by Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretzky, Serena Williams and Tiger Woods in their respective disciplines: each of these athletes unlocked a whole new standard for greatness that remains the benchmark generations later. Kipchoge transcended the marathon.

But what of Kelvin Kiptum in this context?

The marathon felt like it was about to undergo another major sea change in 2024. In January, Kiptum announced he would effectively commandeer the Rotterdam Marathon that April to run under two hours in the marathon. Unlike his peers, who tend to be cautious and non-committal about attacking records, Kiptum stated it loud and clear. It felt like a fait accompli the moment it was announced.

Of course, Kiptum never made it Rotterdam.

And what of the Paris Olympic marathon, which would have been Kiptum’s first Games appearance?

It’s a fascinating what if moment in sports history. Kiptum would have been the clear favorite, but he would also have been racing well outside his comfort zone. Up until his death, Kiptum had only raced flat and controlled races with pacers, even though he did not seemingly need one in Chicago to set the world record. 

Instead, Kiptum would have found himself on the start line with 81 runners who all saw him as the pace setter. He would have faced a very different course than he was used to—Paris was legendarily hilly with a section midway through dubbed “the wall.” And of course, as a championship-style race, just as the fields had done with Kipchoge in both Tokyo and the Rio Olympics, Kiptum would have found himself at front of the race. And that may have suited him just fine.

Of course, none of this ever transpired.

Kiptum’s death also leaves another haunting stain on distance running: what to do with the question of “who is the greatest marathoner of all time?” 

It would be very easy to say that it is unquestionably Eliud Kipchoge. After all, he has the most accolades, the most marathon major wins; he is a former world record holder and is still the only person to have ever run under two hours to the marathon. 

Kipchoge is an icon and his own legacy should be celebrated for what it is. Without him, elite marathoning would have been in a desperate bind over the last decade. Along with Nike’s financial backing and marketing savvy, Kipchoge helped elevate the popularity of distance running and ushered in the super shoe era, which reinvigorated a then-stagnant running industry, challenging other brands and runners to take bigger risks.

Kipchoge’s push to break the two-hour barrier in the marathon while leveraging new technologies and demanding more out of sports science for distance runners has completely revolutionized the sport, and surely paved the way for Kelvin Kiptum to dream big and take the massive risks he did in his three marathons. 

But I’m not sure we can say that Eliud Kipchoge is the greatest marathoner of all time without placing a tiny asterisk at the end of that statement. The corresponding footnote should read as follows:

Kelvin Kiptum, 24, was the world record holder at the time of his death on Feb. 11, 2024. He won his first three marathons in an average overall average time of 2:01:17, by far the greatest beginning of a marathon and career by anyone in history.

These three performances were not only the three greatest to start a career by any athlete ever, they rank as among top performances in all of marathon history. He seemed destined to break the two-hour barrier in a sanctioned race.

He could have become the winner of the Paris Olympic gold marathon at age 24, which would have placed him in the prime of his career for the 2028 LA Olympics as well as the 2032 Olympics in Brisbane when he would have been only 32 years old. (He would have been 36 during the 2036 Games, which don’t even have a host city yet.).

He missed the opportunity to race in Berlin, New York, Chicago and Tokyo. He had a decade of marathoning in front of him. And in that time, he could have chosen to continue to elevate the sport of distance running, giving the marathon another all-time great; perhaps someone who could have transcended the sport.

We will never know how the rest of Kelvin Kiptum’s career would have unfolded. This what if is incomparable in the history of sports. He is not our Steve Prefontaine, as Pre was wonderfully fallible, and would sometime lose gloriously.

Kiptum never lost, and left an immaculate, almost inscrutable record. His legacy will and should loom large, his performances each a tantalizing riddle left for other great runners to try to figure out. And his three marathons — Valencia, London and Chicago — will always haunt the history books, and leave us with the tantalizing question of: “What if…”