He post­ed on his X account that Kip­tum and his coach Ger­vase Hak­iz­imana were involved in a fatal road acci­dent in the Kap­ta­gat area. Law enforce­ment offi­cials estab­lished that the car flew into a tree at high speed; Kep­tum him­self was dri­ving at that moment, and he alleged­ly lost con­trol. It is not­ed that after a col­li­sion with a tree, the vehi­cle flew into a ravine 60 meters away.

Both men received non-life-threat­en­ing injuries. In addi­tion to them, there was a girl in the cab­in who was also seri­ous­ly injured and was tak­en to a local hos­pi­tal — her con­di­tion is not report­ed.

In the post, Odin­ga expressed con­do­lences over the death of the ath­lete and his men­tor. He called Kelvin “an icon of Kenyan ath­let­ics”. “My deep­est con­do­lences to his fam­i­ly, friends and the entire ath­let­ics fra­ter­ni­ty.”wrote the ex-prime min­is­ter, empha­siz­ing that the whole coun­try mourns the loss.

Kenyan Sports Min­is­ter Ababu Namwam­ba also expressed his con­do­lences. In X, he wrote that with the death of Kelvin, the coun­try lost “a spe­cial pearl.”

Kip­tum became famous around the world after his par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Chica­go Marathon in 2023. This race was a real tri­umph for him: then Kelvin set a record, run­ning the dis­tance in 2 hours 35 sec­onds. The pre­vi­ous record also belonged to a Kenyan — Eli­ud Kip­choge cov­ered a dis­tance of more than 42 kilo­me­ters in 2 hours and 1 minute. In addi­tion, in the same year, Kip­tum won the Lon­don Marathon.

World Ath­let­ics offi­cial­ly rec­og­nized the run­ner’s record only last week. This com­ing sum­mer, the marathon run­ner was due to trav­el with the Kenyan team to Chi­na to take part in the Olympic Games in Bei­jing. And before that, in April, he had a race com­ing up in Rot­ter­dam, for which Kelvin had big plans: he want­ed to improve his achieve­ment and become the first ath­lete in his­to­ry to com­plete the marathon dis­tance in less than 2 hours.