Ugandan athlete Rebecca Cheptegei dies days after boyfriend sets her on fire

• Cheptegei suffered burns to over 75% of her body
• Kenyan authorities are investigating the circumstances of her death
• Violence against female athletes in Kenya in the spotlight
• According to media reports, there was a dispute between the runner and her boyfriend over land

ELDORET, Kenya — Ugandan Olympic marathon runner Rebecca Cheptegei died on Thursday, four days after she was doused with petrol and set on fire by her boyfriend in Kenya, the latest attack on a female athlete in the country.

Cheptegei, 33, who was competing in the Paris Olympics, suffered burns to more than 75 percent of her body in Sunday's attack, Kenyan and Ugandan media reported.

She is the third prominent female athlete to be killed in Kenya since October 2021.

“We have learned of the sad death of our Olympic athlete Rebecca Cheptegei… following a brutal attack by her boyfriend,” said Donald Rukare, president of the Uganda Olympic Committee, in a post on X.

“May her gentle soul rest in peace and we strongly condemn violence against women,” he said.

The runner, who finished 44th in Paris, was taken to hospital in the Kenyan Rift Valley city of Eldoret after the attack.

It was not immediately clear whether her attacker was her current or former partner.

Cheptegei “died of organ failure at 5:30am this morning,” Owen Menach, senior director of clinical services at Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital, told Reuters, adding that a full report on the circumstances of her death would be released on Thursday afternoon.

The Kenyan newspaper The Standard reported, citing doctors at the same hospital, that her attacker also sustained injuries in the incident and was admitted to intensive care with 30% burns.

Gender-based violence

Kenyan Sports Minister Kipchumba Murkomen described Cheptegei’s death as a loss “for the entire region”.

“This tragedy is a stark reminder that we must do more to combat gender-based violence in our society, which has reared its ugly head in elite sport circles in recent years,” he said in a statement.

The Uganda Athletics Federation called for justice, while Jackson Tuwei, president of governing body Athletics Kenya, said Cheptegei was “a great loss to the world of athletics”.

Sebastian Coe, president of the World Athletics Association, also paid tribute to Cheptegei, praising him as an “incredibly versatile runner who still has a lot to give on the roads, in the mountains and on cross-country courses.”

The athlete's father, Joseph Cheptegei, told reporters he had asked the government to protect her children and property “so that no one breaks into her house and takes anything.”

“The land … has brought problems,” he said, after local media reported that there had been a dispute over land between the mother of two children and her boyfriend in the days before the attack.

Peter Ogwang, Uganda's minister of state for sports, said Kenyan authorities were investigating the killing, which has highlighted the violence faced by women in the East African country.

Nearly 34% of Kenyan girls and women aged 15 to 49 were victims of physical violence, according to government data from 2022, with married women particularly at risk.

The 2022 survey found that 41% of married women had experienced violence.

According to a report by UN Women and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, African countries overall recorded the highest number of femicides in 2022, both in absolute numbers and relative to the size of the continent's female population.

In October 2021, Olympic runner Agnes Tirop, a rising star in Kenya's highly competitive athletics scene, was found dead in her home in the town of Iten with multiple stab wounds to her neck.

Her husband, Ibrahim Rotich, was charged with her murder and pleaded not guilty. The case is still ongoing.

The murder of the 25-year-old shocked Kenya and led to active and former athletes founding “Tirop's Angels” in 2022 to combat domestic violence.

Joan Chelimo, one of the group's founders, told Reuters that female athletes are at high risk of exploitation and violence from men who are interested in their money.

“They fall into the traps of sex offenders who pose as lovers in their lives,” she said.

— Reporting by George Obulutsa, Humphrey Malalo, Sonia Rao in Nairobi, John Wamanya in Eldoret and Elias Biryabarema in Kampala; Writing by Ammu Kannampilly; Editing by Hereward Holland, Gareth Jones, Toby Chopra and Christina Fincher