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Kenya is known as a hotbed of athletics talent with new starts emerging every year. However, there are some who ruled the roost but went off the radar when fans were still waiting for more.
Kenya has been producing top athletics talents for decades with runners in middle and long distance races ruling major championships.
However, over the years, there are those who were at the top pf their game before going off the radar when fans were still waiting for more. Pulse Sports profiles some of them.
David Rudisha
A world record holder, two Olympics gold medals and with two world titles, David Rudisha had the world at his feet as it seemed everything he touched turned to gold.
However, in July 2017, he suffered a setback that would come to rob athletics lovers of one of its superstars. Having overcome injuries previously, a muscle strain in July 2017 proved the last straw as it locked him from that year’s World Championships.
What followed was a series of setbacks with back pain, surgery on a fractured ankle, a serious car crash, breakdown of his marriage and loss of his father in 2019.
He never recovered and decided to call it quits, focusing on his various ambassadorial roles and his job in the Kenya Police since.
Mercy Cherono
Mercy Cherono turned heads not just for her immense athletics talents but her beauty which made her the poster girl of Kenyan athletics.
A two-time former world junior champion, who later won Commonwealth gold in 5,000m in 2014 and world silver medal over the distance in 2013, Cherono was set to light up the track but she did not fully realise her potential.
She finished fifth at the 2015 World Championships and improved to fourth at the 2016 Rio Olympics but after having her baby in 2018, not much was heard of her.
Cherono’s last race was in December 2023 at the Corrida Internationale de Houilles in France when she won the 10km race.
Silas Kiplagat
Silas Kiplagat won a silver medal at the 2011 World Championships, a year after becoming the Commonwealth champion over the distance.
He was seen as the next big thing in the 1,500m but he disappeared from the scene, to the surprise of his fans.
Kiplagat explained previously that he suffered a tendon injury that made a comeback difficult and in 2017, he had hopes of transitioning to 5,000.
However, that proved difficult and even after promising to come back in a major way, the 35-year-old, whose time of 3:27.64 is the 15th best of all time in 1,500m, is yet to be seen.
His last event was the Kenya Prisons Championships in Nairobi in May 2023 when he managed sixth place in the 5,000m.
Pamela Jelimo
Pamela Jelimo burst onto the scene at the 2008 Beijing Olympics when she won gold at just 18. It was Kenya’s first Olympics gold in 800m and it set her up for further success that season as she went on to win $1 million IAAF Golden League Jackpot.
However, it seems that was the beginning of her tribulations as she would struggle in 2009 when she failed to finish her semi-final at the World Championships in Berlin, before she had a comeback in 2012 when she won gold at the World Indoor Championships.
At the London Olympics that year, Jelimo finished fourth but was later elevated to third after two Russian runners, who finished first and third, were handed lifetime bans over doping.
Since then, she went off the radar, competing last in 2014 at the Eaubonne Meeting National in France, when she finished fifth.
Hyvin Kiyeng
Hyvin Kiyeng is another Kenyan middle-distance runner who has not been seen for a number of years after a highly successful track career.
Kiyeng won gold in the 3,000m steeplechase at the 2015 World Championships and bronze at the 2017 edition while she claimed Olympics silver in Rio 2016 and bronze at Tokyo 2020.
However, the 2011 African champion disappeared from the scene, failing to make it to the 2022 and 2023 World Championships as well as the Paris 2024 Olympics, her last competition being the National Police Championships in Nairobi in April 2022, when she finished eighth.
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