[Editor’s Note: This poem, written by Angie Funtanilla, is dedicated to 2024 Olympian, and 2022 World Mountain Running Up and Down champion, Rebecca Cheptegei of Uganda, who recently lost her life in a violent assault at her home in Kenya. All at iRunFar would like to offer our deepest sympathy to Rebecca’s family and loved ones. May she rest in peace.]
Rebecca Cheptegei, 2022 International Mountain Working Championships Up and Down Champion. Photograph: iRunFar/Meghan Hicks
She will have been scared
on that starting point in Paris,
apprehensive is most probably extra correct,
because the seconds ticked right down to her Olympic Marathon debut.
Uganda at the line,
the black, yellow, and purple
daring repeating colours,
her flag stitched simply above her center
that she poured onto pavement
alongside the swanky Seine and Tuileries Lawn.
Soaking all of it in with a
face all industry and self-discipline,
what were given her right here to this day and age,
to run for her hometown, long term,
wellbeing, youngsters and Self.
To are living smartly, race smartly,
one step at a time and so she did
to the Palace of Versailles and again.
Crossed the end in a stacked box,
her debut ranked forty fourth.
Cheptegei, perpetually within the books,
regardless of her frame burned on objective,
torched through the hand of any other,
regardless of her inconceivable early passing,
Cheptegei, perpetually etched in magnetic historical past.