Joshua Cheptegei of Uganda celebrates with his national flag after winning Olympic gold in the Men's 10,000m Final at Stade de France in France on August 02, 2024. PHOTO/REUTERS
Uganda’s success stories are never easy. On September 2, 1972, John Akii-Bua ran a world record 47.82 seconds in the difficult inner lane during the 400m hurdles final en route to bagging Uganda’s first-ever Olympic gold medal. Uganda’s victories do not come easy. The sweet chapters are painful to write and so is Joshua Cheptegei’s.
On Friday night, August 2, he etched his name further in the history books as the country’s greatest of all time after he superseded a bulk of barriers to clinch the men’s 10,000-metre gold medal inside the Stade de France at the Paris 2024 Olympics. It was a special night as Uganda pocketed its 12th medal in Olympics history.
Six of those medals have come inside a period of 12 years. Cheptegei became the first Ugandan to ever win a medal thrice at these Games. The 27-year-old added to his 10,000m silver and 5,000m gold medals won at the Tokyo 2020 Games in Japan three years ago.
In Tokyo, Cheptegei did not manage the humid conditions well and when the rest of the field ran a race banking on his decisions, it turned out relatively slow. Seven men inevitably had a chance to kick at the bell and by the time Cheptegei charged well, Ethiopian Selemon Barega had won the gold medal on July 30, 2021.
Cheptegei got a silver medal, while Jacob Kiplimo got the bronze medal after that 25-lap final.
Cheptegei feels he is now at liberty to switch focus to marathon running after collecting 12 individual medals at the major championships on track and road over the past decade. It has been a long journey for Cheptegei, who broke out as a 17-year-old when he beat 37 other competitors for the 10,000m gold medal during the 2014 World Junior Athletics Championships in Eugene, USA.
He was spotted by his manager Jurrie van der Velden from the Netherlands under the Global Sports Communication (GSC) company. This happened about two years after Stephen Kiprotich had won the marathon title at the London 2012 Olympics in England.
Kiprotich and the late Benjamin Kiplagat, a 3,000m steeplechase runner tragically killed in Kenya this year, were the first athletes who Jurrie worked with in Uganda. After Eugene, Jurrie spotted something special in Cheptegei. At the Rio 2016 Olympics, Cheptegei was potent material when he made sixth and eighth place finishes over the 10,000m and 5,000m finals in Brazil.
GSC decided to bring him a full-time coach in Addy Ruiter and a camp was set-up in Kapchorwa. That’s akin to a similar programme that was already running in Kenya and Ethiopia.
“We noticed Joshua already had endurance in the body. We only needed speed to make him a world beater,” Jurrie said then.
Since then, Cheptegei’s name has never left the lips of the global athletics lovers.
In 2017, Cheptegei had a chance to announce himself to the world stage on home soil but he miscalculated his race and went too fast, losing the lead to finish a distant 30th during the World Cross-country Championships in Kololo, Kampala. He was mocked on social media by Ugandans, but months later, he grabbed the silver medal behind Great Britain’s Mo Farah during the London World Championships in England.
In early 2018, Cheptegei won his first world titles—the 5,000m and 10,000m gold medals ahead of Canadian Mohammed Ahmed during the Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast in Australia. That was enough to catapult his confidence. Cheptegei buried the ghosts of Kololo by landing the senior men’s World Cross-Country title in Aarhus, Denmark in 2019. He went on to win the 10,000m title at the Doha World Athletics Championships, a 5,000m Diamond League trophy and wrap up that year with the 10km world record (WR) mark in Valencia, Spain.
Who is Cheptegei?
Date of birth: September 12, 1996
Major Races: 5000m, 10000m
Personal Bests: 5000m (12:35.36), 10000m (26:11.00), 21km (59:21)
Coach: Addy Ruiter
Manager: Jurrie van der Velden
Kit Sponsor: Nike
