Slain Ugandan Olympian buried with full military honours

By Elias Biryabarema and Ammu Kannampilly

KAMPALA (Reuters) -Ugandan Olympic runner Rebecca Cheptegei, who died after allegedly being doused in petrol and set alight by her former partner, was buried Saturday with full military honours at her ancestral place in Uganda's northeast.

Cheptegei, 33, returned to her home in the highlands of western Kenya, an area popular with international runners for its high altitude training facilities, after coming 44th in the marathon at the Paris Olympics on August 11.

It would be her final race.

Three weeks later her former boyfriend, Dickson Ndiema Marangach, allegedly attacked Cheptegei as she returned from church with her two daughters and younger sister in the village of Kinyoro, Kenya police and her family said.

Her father Joseph Cheptegei told Reuters that his daughter had approached police at least three times to file complaints against Marangach, most recently on Aug. 30, two days before the alleged attack by her former partner.

She suffered burns to 80% of her body and succumbed to her injuries four days later.

"I don't think I am going to make it," she told her father while being treated in hospital, he said.

"If I die, just bury me at home in Uganda."

Hundreds of mourners, including fellow Olympians from Uganda and Kenya, gathered for her funeral in Bukwo in Uganda's northeast near the border with Kenya.

In speeches she was fondly eulogised as a hero, a mother and sister, and afterwards her body was lowered into her grave minutes after 5 p.m. (1200 GMT)

She was buried in full military honours, including a gun salute by the Ugandan military of which she was a member.

"She embodied the admirable spirit of resilience, selflessness, generosity and hard work, which worked together to catapult her to international glory," Kipchumba Murkomen, Kenya's sports minister said as he eulogised the athlete.

Her death, he said, had marked "a tragic end to a blossoming life."

FEMALE ATHLETES AT RISK

Cheptegei's death sparked anger over the high levels of violence against women in Kenya, particularly in the athletics community, with the marathoner becoming the third elite runner to allegedly die at the hands of a romantic partner since 2021.

One in three Kenyan girls or women aged 15-49 have suffered physical violence, according to government data from 2022.

Rights groups say female athletes in Kenya are at a high risk of exploitation and violence by men drawn to their prize money, which far exceeds local incomes.

Cheptegei's sporting successes include winning the 2021 World Mountain and Trail Running Championships in Thailand, and a year later earning first place in the Padova Marathon in Italy and setting a national record for the marathon.

Born in eastern Uganda in 1991, she met Marangach during a training visit to Kenya, later moving to the country to pursue her dream of becoming an elite runner.

Marangach died a few days after Cheptegei, from burns allegedly sustained during the attack, dividing opinion among the local running community.

"Justice really would have been for him to sit in jail and think about what he had done," said marathoner Viola Cheptoo, co-founder of Tirop's Angels, a support group for athletes facing domestic violence in Kenya.

The circumstances of Cheptegei's death shocked the world, but her name may yet inspire future athletes, with the French capital planning to name a sports facility in her honour.

"She dazzled us here in Paris. We saw her. Her beauty, her strength, her freedom," the city's mayor Anne Hidalgo told reporters. "Paris will not forget her."

(Reporting by Elias Biryabarema; Additional reporting by Ammu Kannampilly; Writing by Hereward Holland; Editing by Ammu Kannampilly, Michael Perry and Clelia Oziel)