Adozen young Kenyan women wearing dark leggings and colorful T-shirts are resolutely running up a steep, narrow dirt street. At the top, they veer around a bend and race back down. When they reach the bottom, they pivot and return up the hill. It’s the rainy season in Iten, a small village in western Kenya, and the route is loose and damp from the downpours, caking their sneakers in terracotta-colored mud. Tiny beads of sweat slide down their foreheads. One of them, a petite runner with broad shoulders named Ava (a pseudonym to protect her safety), has a slick sheen on her face. For her, each stride is not only a fight against gravity—it’s a war against the weight of her country’s history of violence against women.
Kenya has long been one of the most successful participants in distance running at the Summer Olympics. Today, aspiring athletes come from all over the country to train here on the famed slopes of Iten, where the African nation nurtures some of the greatest female runners in world history. When they arrive, they pass by a giant welcome sign that declares “Home of Champions.”
Gioia Shah
Visitors pass through Iten’s “Home of Champions” sign on the way into town.
Advertisement – Continue Reading Below
What’s less obvious are the emotional and psychological scars many women bring with them. Ava is no exception. As a young girl from a humble background, she watched in awe as Kenyan women made headlines and won Olympic races. She knew she could run fast and far, too. “I saw I had a talent,” she says. After her parents could no longer afford school fees, Ava left high school, convinced running was her ticket out of poverty and into a better life. “I decided to run to be successful,” she says. At the start of her career, she met a man who promised to help make her a star. But away from the training sites, she found herself on a path that’s become all too familiar for female runners in Kenya.
With each new milestone and sprint across the finish line, Ava says he was slowly seizing control of her career. And not just that, he took the one thing that brought her joy and a deep sense of identity—her love for running. “He would be really negative, saying, ‘You won’t win, you’re bad,’” she remembers. When she suspected he was also stealing the prize money she won racing, the relationship turned. “He threatened to tear my throat out,” she claims.
Gioia
Iten is widely considered the running capital of the world, and at any given time there are thousands of runners there training on the town’s famed hills.
Advertisement – Continue Reading Below
Ava did what she’d done in so many races before—she found a reservoir of hidden strength and left him. Today, she is restarting her dream to be a professional runner, just like the ones she worshipped growing up. But this time, she’s doing it with the help of other women, remaining vigilant about what—and who—might try to stand in her way. For her and many of the other extraordinary women running under the Kenyan flag, Iten’s “Home of Champions” sign can feel less welcoming, and more like a warning of what happens when you dare to dream too big. Like a trap, Ava warns.
In October 2021, Kenyan long-distance legend Agnes Tirop was found brutally killed and her husband was charged with her murder. He was also one of her coaches, and her death served to underscore the shocking number of femicides in the country. A report published last year by UN Women found that nearly 89,000 women and girls were killed because of their gender in 2022—the highest yearly number recorded in the past two decades—and that Africa had the highest number of victims in the world. The Kenyan government doesn’t collect official data on femicide, however, an organization called Femicide Count Kenya, which monitors cases covered in regional news outlets, reports that on average a woman or girl is killed every other day in Kenya because of her gender.
Gioia Shah
Ava, pictured here, trains every morning with a group of other runners.
Advertisement – Continue Reading Below
Perhaps because of Tirop, the world was also alerted to an epidemic of women silently suffering from gender-based violence. According to the country’s Bureau of National Statistics, nearly half of all Kenyan women ages 15 to 49 have experienced some form of physical violence, and the main perpetrators are husbands or intimate partners. “I met a friend just the other day who is going through the same thing [that] I did,” Ava says. “It’s very painful to think about.”
Tirop’s death helped spark a historic cultural introspection that has since inspired runners and other women in Kenya to speak out for the first time about their own abusive relationships. Her family and friends founded Tirop’s Angels, an organization that helps runners like Ava find their footing after personal traumas through financial support and counseling. More broadly, the group raises awareness about domestic and intimate-partner violence in Kenya well beyond the running community. That wider scope has perhaps never been more necessary: Earlier this year, 14 women were reportedly killed in just one month, prompting thousands of Kenyans, both men and women, to stage a historic protest in Nairobi.
Gioia Shah
Many Kenyan women and young girls are drawn to Iten by the promise of a better future.
Advertisement – Continue Reading Below
Ava is getting her life back on track with the help of Tirop’s Angels. Every morning, she laces up her sneakers and meets her running group to take on Iten’s twisty trails. She is in the midst of training for an upcoming marathon in September. It’s a challenging road ahead, but she’s learned that there’s strength in numbers. “My goal is to get to where I was before that man pulled me in,” she says.
Kenya dominates in cross-country races, marathons, and other road-racing circuits, and winners often come from Iten or nearby areas. Scientists have studied why this particular region along the Great Rift Valley, a geological system stretching from the Middle East to Mozambique, is home to some of the fastest runners on earth. It could be that, at nearly 8,000 feet above sea level, the high altitude allows the body to acclimate to lower oxygen levels and produce more red blood cells. Or maybe it’s just that the endless stretches of country road are perfect for training. Someone even wrote a book investigating whether genetics could explain the near-mythical phenomenon. Whatever the reason, Iten is the uncontested running capital of the world, and athletes go there regularly hoping to unlock its secrets.
When Irish missionary Colm O’Connell came to Iten in the mid-1970s, there was nothing more than a few houses and the local Catholic high school, where he taught geography and coached sports. Despite having no formal training in track and field, O’Connell, who still lives on the school grounds, founded one of Kenya’s oldest running clubs for young talent and is widely considered one of the country’s most influential coaches. He has also seen firsthand over the last 50 years what can happen to a town plagued by its own success.
In 1968, Kenyan star Kipchoge Keino, who hails from the Rift Valley region, captured international attention after defeating American world-record holder Jim Ryun in the 1,500-meter at the Mexico City Summer Olympics. His breathtaking gold medal win almost single-handedly demonstrated that Kenya was going to be a running powerhouse. In time, there were whispers of a town deep in the country with untapped potential. Trainers, reporters, athletes, agents, and coaches began coming to Iten. “They felt Iten is a place of opportunity,” O’Connell recalls.
Advertisement – Continue Reading Below
Gioia Shah
Tirop’s Angels helps runners in Kenya find their footing after personal traumas. Here, members of the staff pose outside the organization’s offices in Iten. From left: secretary Miriam Tanui, co-founder Viola Cheptoo, counselor Selina Kogo, and volunteer Viola Barsulai.
For a long time, only men were encouraged to run competitively in Kenya. “There were a lot of taboos attached to women running,” O’Connell says. It took decades before female Kenyan runners were afforded the same opportunities on the international stage. But when they were, they dominated. Tegla Loroupe became the first African woman to dominate a major marathon after breaking the tape at the New York City Marathon in 1994 and 1995. In 2010, Edna Kiplagat cemented her legacy as one of the greatest distance runners of all time with first-place finishes in both the New York City and Los Angeles marathons. And at the upcoming Paris Olympics, reigning marathon champion Peres Jepchirchir will return to the track to defend her title.
Their success isn’t only about medals—winning is also a way to survive and feed their families. For many professional runners today, the goal is to score a sponsorship from a powerful global sports brand like Nike or Adidas. These deals can come with performance bonuses and resources to race in cities that offer big cash prizes. For example, top winners in the open division of the Boston Marathon can earn up to $150,000. In Kenya, where more than a third of the population lives below the poverty line, that amount of money can be life-changing. For an East African woman, running opens up doors to financial independence that could finally put them on an equal footing with men.
Advertisement – Continue Reading Below
The promise of a better future brings women and girls to Iten. Many of them arrive already extremely vulnerable. Some are escaping dangerous marriages. Others have come as the last, best hope to provide for families they have left behind. Almost all of them show up alone, with little in their pockets but determination and dreams. “People prey on them,” says runner Joan Chelimo, who has lived in Iten for 12 years. Men offer their services to new arrivals as trainers or coaches, “specifically looking for young [female] athletes,” he adds.
Some of them are actual professionals or well-intentioned, but many are not, and for someone new to the scene, spotting the difference can be hard. “Nobody taught them about their rights, or how to manage their finances, or what to do after success,” Chelimo says. It can become all too easy to fall into a vicious cycle of dependence, abuse, and isolation.
Gioia Shah
Many of the female runners who come to Iten to train arrive already extremely vulnerable.
Advertisement – Continue Reading Below
As a teenager growing up in Kenya, Ava started running in high school competitions. “I loved it,” she says. But when she dropped out because her family could no longer help pay for school, running went from an after-school activity to a way to support herself. At the age of 20, she moved to another town in Kenya known for long-distance running to chase her dreams of going pro. That’s where she “met a man,” Ava tells me through a translator, speaking in her native Swahili. “He told me, ‘I can help you run.’”
He assisted her as she trained outdoors, and before long, their relationship turned romantic and they moved in together. A couple of months later, Ava’s career started to take off, and she found a manager and received sponsorships to compete in half and full marathons overseas. But with all her successes abroad, there was trouble back home. “We started quarreling,” Ava remembers. Then she says he convinced her to open a joint bank account. “At first, I didn’t notice that he took money,” she says. But she did notice his change in temperament. He became angry and threatening, increasingly treated her like a commodity. “He feared hurting me because of the races,” she says. But when she became pregnant with their child and was unable to make money by racing, she says he turned his fists on her. “Depression set in,” she says. “My mind was shattered.”
Human rights experts suggest that inequality is entrenched in Kenyan society, and that some forms of gender-based violence have been “normalized,” in part because of the country’s long-standing patriarchal culture and its colonial-era laws. There is still a notion in Kenya that “one gender is inferior,” says Jean-Paul Murunga, who studies Kenya’s treatment of women for the organization Equality Now.
Back in Iten, some of the men positioning themselves as trainers or coaches ultimately try to gain full control of female runners by seizing their prize money. “They don’t love you,” Ava says matter-of-factly. “They see potential; they see money.” Weary and feeling broken, she returned home in 2019 to live with her mother. After taking time to heal, she decided she had to try to take another stab at running. “It was my career, I wanted to become a champion,” she says.
Advertisement – Continue Reading Below
Gioia Shah
In Iten, some men position themselves as trainers or coaches and ultimately try to gain full control of female runners by seizing their prize money.
For 2,300 Kenyan shillings a month (around $18 U.S. dollars), Ava rents a 65-square-foot room in Iten. During a recent visit there, she is sitting on a large yellow can filled with drinking water in the middle of the space. The only piece of furniture is a bed. Her hair is in tight braids, and her brown eyes squint when she smiles. She recalls her first days in Iten, having “no rent money, no food, no training shoes,” and “washing people’s clothes” to earn some money. “It was difficult,” she says. “I had no support, I was struggling.” That’s when she first heard about Tirop’s Angels, which had been offering women runners some small grants and counseling. After going through some of her darkest days, she says the idea of a helping hand felt like seeing “light at the end of the tunnel.”
Advertisement – Continue Reading Below
Gioia Shah
Viola Cheptoo.
Gioia Shah
Joan Chelimo.
The Tirop’s Angels headquarters in Iten are just beyond the “Home of Champions” sign. On an overcast afternoon in April, nurse and counselor Selina Cheptonui Kogo, who joined the organization last year, is there. Kogo says she has seen young athletes get into romantic relationships with abusive or controlling men who are financially motivated. “They may not have been coming to you for real love,” she says. “[For them] this is a potential business.” But she has also seen the incredible resilience of Kenyan women, especially when they have the support of other women.
Advertisement – Continue Reading Below
Hanging on a bright blue wall in the waiting room is a drawing of Agnes Tirop. Sketched in black, she is crossing a finish line and smiling, holding a Kenyan flag above her head in celebration. Hailing from the Great Rift Valley, Tirop was for the most part reserved, but friendly. “She would not say a lot, but she would always hug you,” says Viola Cheptoo, who trained with her in Iten. “She shaved her hair and ran barefoot during warm-ups.”
One month after narrowly missing out on a bronze medal at the Olympics in Tokyo, Tirop broke the women’s world record in the 10-kilometer during a race in Germany and solidified her status as one of Kenya’s best runners. Four weeks later, at the age of 25, she was discovered at home stabbed to death. Her husband was arrested and arraigned in connection to her murder, after attempting to flee to a neighboring country, according to authorities. (When reached by phone, a lawyer for Tirop’s husband said that he couldn’t comment.) Someone from the prosecutor’s office confirmed that he is currently out on bond, and his next hearing is scheduled for October. “I thought, ‘If this has happened to Agnes, someone who is so established—she has money, she has a name, she has a good career, she has so many people who really care for her—what about other women?’ ” Cheptoo says.
Alexander Hassenstein
Agnes Tirop.
Advertisement – Continue Reading Below
Determined not to let another woman become a victim of her success, Cheptoo and Chelimo helped Tirop’s other friends and family start Tirop’s Angels at the end of 2021. Despite juggling families and their own respective careers (Chelimo will race in the marathon at the 2024 Olympics), both recognize the importance of joining the fight to end abuse in their community.
They visit training camps, schools, and churches in Iten and surrounding areas to speak with female runners and other women about gender-based violence. And they often do it while facing great resistance. Cheptoo and Chelimo have been lambasted as “homewreckers” on social media and accused of separating wives from husbands. “They felt that we were against men,” Cheptoo says. “For me, it was just an outreach, a space where women can come in. We can speak about what we are going through, and we can work together.”
By now, the Angels have gained some support from local officials. They are about to launch a school program to spread awareness about violence against women and hope someday in the future to join in the fight to stop female genital mutilation, which is still prevalent in Kenya today, despite being illegal. The group also has bigger plans to open a safe house in Iten for survivors of abuse.
Gioia Shah
Kenyan women gather after a morning run to discuss female empowerment.
Their mission seems to be spreading. Other initiatives are popping up in the country, some also catalyzed by Tirop’s death. In Nyahururu, long-distance runner Mary Ngugi-Cooper has set up Nala Track Club, Kenya’s first girls-only running camp.
In a garden just outside of Iten, a group of 25 women recently met with counselors and other team members from Tirop’s Angels. They sat in blue plastic chairs arranged in a circle, drinking tea and laughing. Some were in their thirties, others in their sixties. Everyone was on an endorphin high from a run earlier in the morning. They weren’t aspiring Olympians or professional athletes. Most of them work in the fields or stay at home to look after their children. But a few months ago, they all decided to start waking up before sunrise to jog together.
The women listened attentively to Viola Barsulai, a teacher and activist who volunteers with Tirop’s Angels, as she talked animatedly in the center of the circle about women’s rights. It’s an uphill battle, but running is the tie that binds and helps carry Kenyan women forward. With a sense of hope, Barsulai tells me later, “We want to tell them they can become champions.”
