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    • Olympic athlete Rebecca Cheptegei dies after being set on fire
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    Olympic athlete Rebecca Cheptegei dies after being set on fire

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    Rebecca Cheptegei, who made her Olympic debut at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, died Thursday from injuries and burns. Police said she was set on fire by a man, reportedly an ex-boyfriend.

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    Ugandan marathon runner Rebecca Cheptegei, who competed in the 2024 Paris Olympics, has died from burns, four days after her ex-boyfriend poured gasoline on her and set her on fire, according to police.

    Cheptegei, 33, who was rushed to Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital in Eldoret, Kenya on Sunday with burns over 75% of her body, has died, the hospital’s director and the Uganda Athletics Federation announced.

    Cheptegei, who was in the hospital’s intensive care unit, “passed away this morning at 5:30 a.m. after her organs failed,” Owen Menach, the hospital’s senior director of clinical services, told Reuters. A full report on the circumstances of her death would be released later in the day, he said.

    “We have learned of the sad passing of our Olympic athlete Rebecca Cheptegei … after a violent attack by her boyfriend,” Donald Rukare, president of the Uganda Olympic Committee, said in a post on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. “May her gentle soul rest in peace and we strongly condemn violence against women.”

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    Who was Rebecca Cheptegei?

    Cheptegei, born and raised in Cheminy, Uganda, had trained in Trans-Nzoia County in western Kenya. She had bought and developed land in Kinyoro, Kenya, to make it easier and cheaper to train in Kenya, Kenyan newspaper The Standard reported.

    Cheptegei made her Olympic debut at the Paris Olympics, where she finished 44th in the women’s marathon.

    She began her career in 2010 and has competed in 1,500 metres, 10,000 metres, half marathons and marathons. She represented Uganda at the 2011 and 2013 World Cross Country Championships in Punta Umbria and Bydgoszcz, The Standard reported.

    In 2022, she won the Padua Marathon in Italy, according to Kenyan online news site TUKO.co.ke. Cheptegei also won gold at the 2022 World Mountain and Trail Running Championships in Chiang Mai, Thailand, the BBC reported.

    Cheptegei recorded her fastest marathon performance (2:22:47) to finish second in the Abu Dhabi Marathon in December 2022, making her the second-fastest female Ugandan marathoner of all time, according to World Athletics statistics.

    Her mother, Agnes Ndiema-Cheptegei, described her daughter as “a good child, very polite and she didn’t have many problems,” Reuters reported.

    What happened to Rebecca Cheptegei?

    According to police, Cheptegei was attacked by a friend, Dickson Ndiema Marangach, who sneaked into Cheptegei’s home in Endebess in western Kenya before the attack while she and her two children were at church, Kenyan and Ugandan newspapers reported.

    “When he returned, Dickson, who had fetched petrol, poured it on Rebecca before setting her alight,” Trans-Nzoia County police commander Jeremiah Ole Kosiom told The Star newspaper in Nairobi, Kenya. “The two were rescued by neighbours who put out the fire and rushed them to hospital.”

    Marangach was also burned in the attack, which police described as a domestic dispute. He remains in intensive care but is improving and stable, the BBC reported.

    Joseph Cheptegei, Cheptegei’s father, said her daughter and Marangach had been separated for a long time and were involved in a land dispute over her land in western Kenya. The two were due to appear before the Directorate of Criminal Investigations in Kenya, The Standard reported.

    “The country … has created problems,” he told reporters on Thursday, adding that he asked the government to protect her children and property “so that no one enters her house and takes anything.”

    Kosiom confirmed that Rebecca Cheptegei and Marangach had a dispute over her land and said police were continuing to investigate.

    Rebecca Cheptegei is the third female athlete to die in Kenya in 3 years

    Cheptegei was the third female athlete to be murdered in Kenya since October 2021.

    Peter Ogwang, Uganda’s minister of state for sports, said Kenyan authorities were investigating the killing, which has drawn attention to violence against women in the East African country.

    Kenyan Sports Minister Kipchumba Murkomen called her death a loss “for the entire region”.

    “This tragedy is a painful reminder that we must do more to combat gender-based violence in our societies, which has emerged in elite sport in recent years,” he said in a statement.

    According to 2022 data from the Kenyan government, nearly 34% of Kenyan girls and women between the ages of 15 and 49 have experienced physical violence. The study also found that 41% of married women have experienced violence.

    According to a 2022 report by UN Women and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, African countries collectively recorded the highest number of murders of women, both in absolute terms and relative to the size of the continent’s female population.

    In April 2022, Kenyan-born long-distance runner Damaris Muthee, who competed for Bahrain, was found strangled in the house in Iten, Kenya, where she was training, the BBC reported.

    In October 2021, 25-year-old 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 murder and has pleaded not guilty. That case is ongoing.

    After Tirop’s murder, athletes formed the group Tirop’s Angels to combat domestic violence. One of the founders, Joan Chelimo, told Reuters that female athletes were at high risk of exploitation and violence by men who came for their money.

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

    Contributions: Reuters

    Follow Mike Snider on X and Threads: @mikesnider & mikegsnider.

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