Sunday, February 11. A car crash in Western Kenya. A football tournament final in southern Cote d’Ivoire. On any other Sunday, these two events would have passed by without anyone noticing. But these were different.

It’s often said that sports stories have a unique ability to evoke raw emotions. And these two events, which ironically took place within an hour of each other, might just be the most emotional sports stories in a long time, albeit evoking emotions of wildly contrasting nature.

The Tragedy of Kelvin Kiptum

Kelvin Kiptum was always destined for greatness. Born in 1999 in a village in the Great Rift Valley in Kenya, famous for producing multiple long-distance champions, he herded livestock barefoot to earn a little extra cash for his parents.

It was during one of these livestock herding shifts that he encountered a group of athletes training, including the Rwandan national 3,000m steeplechase record holder Gervais Hakizimana. After running with them for a few days, Kiptum knew he’d found what he wanted to do.

Two stories, one tragic and the other uplifting, happened in the world of sports last month, remarkably within an hour of each other

Kiptum embarked on an intense, bordering-on-the-insane way of life that would have him spend most of the time he was awake running, often for 30 days without taking rest.

His parents wanted him to study for a diploma and become an electrician, so he’d sneak out of school to continue running. He was self-coached, relying on his innate motivation and drive to keep going. Since he couldn’t afford track shoes or the commute to nearby training centres, he’d run on mountain roads.

Soon he found himself running in half-marathons around Kenya, culminating in a victory in Eldoret in 2018. Over the coming years, he travelled to compete in a few meets in Europe to push himself more.

Marathon running is a brutal sport — aside from the punishing distance of 42.2 kilometres (26.2 miles), it’s run on tarmac rather than on track, often under unforgiving conditions such as an intense sun or rain, and without a stadium full of fans to cheer you on. It requires impeccable strength and stamina, sheer focus and, most impressively, the ability of professional athletes to keep up a superhuman speed for more than two hours.

So it is understandable that most marathon runners start from track events such as 5,000 metres or 10,000 metres and then go up to the half-marathon or marathon distances. Kelvin Kiptum was at home in road conditions from the get-go. He was a different breed.

He ran his first marathon in December of 2022 in Valencia, Spain. Despite being unknown due to his lack of experience, Kiptum ran shoulder to shoulder with the lead group till the halfway point, before surprising everyone and kicking on.

In the process, he clocked the fastest time ever by a debutant (2:01:53, 44 seconds off the world record), became only the third person to break 2 hours and 2 minutes, and ran the fastest-ever second half of a marathon.

It was almost unbelievable, because marathon runners do not peak so early. Eliud Kipchoge, arguably the greatest marathon runner of all time, needed 11 marathons to set the world record. And here was a debutant, coming within a minute of his magical time.

2023 saw Kiptum rewrite history books again. Under the coaching of the same Gervais Hakizimana he had started running with, he obliterated the field at the prestigious London Marathon, setting the course record and coming within 16 seconds of the world record (2:01:25).

In October, at the Chicago Marathon, Kiptum went one step further and knocked an astonishing 34 seconds off the world record, running the course in 2 hours and 35 seconds. Kipchoge’s time, once thought untouchable, had fallen to a 23-year-old.

Kiptum’s time was ratified on February 6 by Sebastian Coe, the President of World Athletics. Just five days later, he was involved in a car crash between Eldoret and Kaptagat in Western Kenya, which saw both him and his coach passing away. He was 24, with an exceptional career in front of him.

He will forever be remembered for what could have been. We do know that he was training to beat the myth that is the two-hour barrier, much like the four-minute mile was before Roger Bannister, in Rotterdam in April. And he would have faced off against his idol Kipchoge in Paris at the Olympics, in the most eagerly anticipated race in marathon history.

For someone who broke the world record in 2023 and held three of the seven fastest times in history, expectations of him were extraordinary. And they felt rational, such was the talent of the man. Kipchoge himself tweeted after the crash that “Kiptum had a whole life ahead of him to achieve incredible greatness.”

Kiptum leaves behind a widow and two young children. Already in mourning, the Kenyan nation lost another hero when the legendary Henry Rono passed away four days later on February 15. Rono set four world records in four different events in a glorious span of 81 days in 1978 and is widely considered the trailblazer for Kenyan athletics.

The Miracle of Sebastien Haller

Where Kiptum’s demise robbed the world of a generational talent before he reached the peak of his powers, Sebastien Haller dodged his own brush with death to provide the ultimate inspirational story.

The 29-year-old Haller scored the winning goal, an improvised flicked volley, in the final of the Africa Cup of Nations to help Ivory Coast win the tournament on their home soil. Amid celebrations, he broke down in tears during an interview with a local news outlet.

Haller had been a promising striker since his under-17 days, having represented France at that level. Sustained performances earned him a move to Eintracht Frankfurt in 2017. In 2019, he was snapped up by West Ham United for a club-record fee of €45 million, but the move was largely disappointing, as he failed to live up to the lofty standards he’d set in Germany.

He moved on to Ajax Amsterdam in 2021, again for a club-record fee, where he famously became only the second man after the great Cristiano Ronaldo to score in all six games of the UEFA Champions League group stages. After just one season in the Netherlands, in which he finished as the top scorer, he returned to Germany when Borussia Dortmund bought him for €34.5 million.

Within a week of him signing with Dortmund, Haller pulled out of the side’s pre-season training camp with horrible news: he had been diagnosed with testicular cancer. The footballing world, hardly having recovered from the heart attack Christian Eriksen suffered in Euros ’20, was in shock.

Six gruelling months of chemotherapy and two surgeries ensued for Haller in his battle against cancer. When he returned to training in late January 2023, his getting rid of cancer was viewed not just as his biggest victory but one of the biggest wins in global football. And in those strange coincidences, he scored his first goal for his new club on World Cancer Day.

Just one year later, Haller was looking on from the bench due to an ankle injury as Ivory Coast limped into the knockouts despite losing 4-0 to Equatorial Guinea. In the RO16 game, Haller returned from injury but not the lean patch of form which had seen him blank in 11 consecutive games for Dortmund.

His substitution was nevertheless impactful, setting up the goal which took the game to penalties and dispatching his penalty when called upon. In the subsequent round, he almost won his nation a place in the semi-finals but his header crashed off the bar.

Thereafter began his real impact, scoring a brilliant “into-the-ground” winner, which bounced over the keeper, before the exquisite volley winner in the final. Cue celebrations for the most improbable of tournament wins, and for the most fitting of crescendos in this wonderful story.

The writer is a sports enthusiast with a background in supply chain management. X: @tahagoheer

Published in Dawn, EOS, March 17th, 2024