Kipchoge Finally addresses A Campaign of Abuses Linking Him to Kelvin Kiptum’s Death
Kipchoge Finally addresses A Campaign of Abuses Linking Him to Kelvin Kiptum’s Death: Olympic champion Eliud Kipchoge has broken silence on Kelvin Kiptum’s Death after a campaign of online abuse that wrongly linked him to the death Marathoner Kelvin Kiptum.
“Kipchoge stated,” I was shocked that people [on] social media platforms are saying ‘Eliud is involved in the death of this boy. That was my worst news ever in my life,”
“I received a lot of bad things; that they will burn the (training) camp, they will burn my investments in town, they will burn my house, they will burn my family. It did not happen but that is how the world is,” he added.
According to the marathoner, his initial reaction when he saw the abuse and false rumours was to check whether his family were safe.
He stated,” I don’t have power to go to police and tell them my life is in danger. So my concern was actually to tell my family to be extra conscious and cautious. I started to call a lot of people. I got really scared of my children going to school and coming back,”
“Sometimes they bike around, but we had to stop them because you never know what will happen. We started to drop them [off] and pick them [up] in the evening. My girl was in boarding school – that was positive that she had no access as far as social media is concerned – but it’s tough for my boys to hear ‘Your dad has killed somebody’ “ he added.
Kipchoge detailed that he lost trust from friends among other impacts that the campaign of abuse had.
He stated, My worst moment was (when) I tried to call my mum. She told me ‘Just take care’ and ‘A lot has been going on. Where I come from is a really local area. And with the age of my mum, I really realised that social media can go everywhere, But she gave me courage. It was really a tough month.”
“It was really painful for me to learn even from my own people, my training mates, those who I have contact with, and the bad words are coming from them. I learned that friendship cannot be forever. I think it’s unfortunate that it happened when I’m celebrating over 20 years in sport. What happened has [made] me not trust anybody. Even my own shadow, I will not trust,” he added.
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