Ugandan Olympic runner Rebecca Cheptegei, who died after allegedly being doused in petrol and set alight by her former partner, was due to be buried on Saturday with full military honours.

Cheptegei 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.”

Cheptegei’s tragic 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.”

-Reuters

The funeral of Sven-Goran Eriksson, the first foreigner to manage England’s national soccer team, was held on Friday in the small Swedish town where he grew up before embarking on a career that would span many decades, countries and trophies.

A soft-spoken but determined coach, Eriksson guided teams in Sweden, Portugal and Italy to major trophies in the 1980s and 1990s before taking on the England job in 2001, managing stars such as David Beckham, with whom he formed a close bond.

Eriksson announced in January that he was terminally ill with pancreatic cancer and spent much of the ensuing months reconnecting with many of the places and people central to his career before he died last month.

The funeral took place in Torsby, a rural town of fewer than 5,000 people near the border with Norway, and was attended by several hundred people inside the church, including Beckham.

Hundreds more followed the service on a big screen set up outside, local police said, and the funeral was given blanket coverage by Swedish media.

After the one-hour service, the coffin was led in procession to a nearby community centre while a brass band played music including “You’ll Never Walk Alone”, the anthem of English club Liverpool, whom Eriksson supported and coached in a legends game in March.

Tributes flowed in from prime ministers, clubs and former players on news of his death while national teams including England and Sweden played with black arm bands during the recent international break.

“Svennis was a true football gentleman,” FIFA Secretary General Mattias Grafstrom said on social media platform X.

“He coached as he lived his life, and he will be sorely missed.”

Eriksson, known in Sweden simply as “Svennis”, led England to the 2002 and 2006 World Cup quarter-finals, and to the 2004 European Championship, managing a golden generation of players that besides Beckham included stars such as Frank Lampard, Wayne Rooney and Steven Gerrard.

He began building his international reputation when he guided Swedish club IFK Gothenburg to the UEFA Cup title in 1982 and went on to win silverware as coach of Portugal’s Benfica and Italian clubs AS Roma, Lazio and Sampdoria.

Unable to end England’s trophy drought, he left the helm of the national side in 2006, going on to coach Manchester City and Leicester City as well as Mexico and Ivory Coast and clubs in China and the Philippines.

Curt Agren, watching the funeral on the screen outside the church wearing an IFK jersey, shorts and cap, reflected on Eriksson’s importance for the club. “He is the greatest we’ve had in the whole world,” he told local news agency TT.

-Reuters

The former partner of Ugandan athlete Rebecca Cheptegei, who is accused of killing her by dousing her in petrol and setting her on fire, has died from burns sustained during the attack, the Kenyan hospital where he was being treated said on Tuesday.

Cheptegei, 33, who competed in the marathon at the Paris Olympics, suffered burns to more than 75% of her body in the Sept. 1 attack and died four days later.

Her former boyfriend, Dickson Ndiema Marangach, died at 7:50 p.m. (1650 GMT) on Monday, said Daniel Lang’at, a spokesperson at Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital in Eldoret in western Kenya, where Cheptegei was also treated and died.

“He died from his injuries, the burns he sustained,” Lang’at told Reuters. Local media reported that he had suffered 30% burns when he assaulted Cheptegei as she was returning home from church with her children.

Cheptegei, who finished 44th in Paris, is the third elite sportswoman to be killed in Kenya since October 2021. Her death has put the spotlight on domestic violence in the East African country, particularly within its running community.

Rights groups say female athletes in Kenya, where many international runners train in the high-altitude highlands, are at a high risk of exploitation and violence at the hands of men drawn to their prize money, which far exceeds local incomes.

“Justice really would have been for him to sit in jail and think about what he had done. This is not positive news whatsoever,” said Viola Cheptoo, co-founder of Tirop’s Angels, a support group for survivors of domestic violence in Kenya’s athletic community.

“The shock of Rebecca’s death is still fresh,” Cheptoo told Reuters.

Cheptoo co-founded Tirop’s Angels in memory of Agnes Tirop, a rising star in Kenya’s highly competitive athletics scene, who was found dead in her home in the town of Iten in October 2021, with multiple stab wounds to the neck.

Ibrahim Rotich, Tirop’s husband, was charged with her murder and has pleaded not guilty. The case is ongoing.

Nearly 34% of Kenyan girls and women aged 15-49 years have suffered physical violence, according to government data from 2022, with married women at particular risk. The 2022 survey found that 41% of married women had faced violence.

Globally, a woman is killed by someone in her own family every 11 minutes, according to a 2023 UN Women study.

-Reuters