The untold story of Kenya’s forgotten fastest blind woman

It is easy to name Kenya’s athletics superstars over the last 20 years. Names like Catherine Ndereba, Dennis Oliech, Dorcas Ndasaba and Paul Tergat may have played their last games long ago, but they are still remembered by many and still occupy our public spheres.

The stars of the moment include: Michael Olunga in football, Sharon Chepchumba in volleyball, Eliud Kipchoge in athletics and Angella Okutoyi in tennis..

They have broken records, won world championships and player of the year awards, earned scholarships abroad and earned countless team and personal accolades. 

One sport that is conspicuously missing from this list is Para sports, which are competitive games played by athletes with physical or mental disability. And Nancy Chelangat Koech is Kenya’s greatest Para Athlete that most Kenyans have never heard of.

Sitting down with Chelangat, her preferred name, at the sitting room table in her parents’ house in Kalyet village, you get a feeling that the girl is one of the greatest Kenyan track athletes. Six huge silver coloured trophies and one wooden plaque decorate the little wall unit that stands on one end of the living room, and there are photos everywhere of her in colourful athletics gear.

She was born blind, but that is not the first thing you notice about her. Her pleasant personality shines through and she smiles easily, as if expecting the same from you, which is surprising because she has never seen anyone smile before.

She is both confident and polite, and she speaks as if every sentence must have an exclamation point – a typical Nandi. As she talks I begin to smile, remembering how I struggled to pronounce some landmarks on our way to her home. Cheswet Primary school, Kalyet dispensary. Segonon primary school… no word ends without an exclamation. 

Her medals, 32 in total, are packed away in a blue tin sanduku in her room. When her brother Geoffrey Rotich brings them out at our request, Nancy jumps on the table and after fiddling for a few seconds, picks one of them up.

It is her latest accolade, a 1,500 meters T11 gold medal she won at the 2023 World Athletics Championship last month in Paris. She won in a personal best time of 4:22.15 that is a national record.
She then feels the table a second time and again picks another medal. She puts both medals around her neck then repeats the process until she has on her neck four medals, then she resumes her resting position. It is only later when I lean forward to read the lettering on the medals that I discover why she picked those four.

“This is the one I won in Japan during the Paralympics, this one I won on Brazil,” she says. She is wearing glasses so dark you cannot see her eyes, but the sense of pride and accomplishment is clear in her voice.

I wonder how she was able to pick four medals out of a collection of 32 with so much precision, and suddenly I see her fingers doing a little dance on the back of one of the trophies. The medals have braille markings at the back, which is how she can tell them apart!

Chelangat, who turned 25 this year, has been very productive at the global stage, more so the Paralympics, which is the equivalent of the Olympics, but for disabled athletes. She won silver and bronze in the 2019 Paralympics, and gold in the Para Athletics World Championships last month.
Such a stellar career, it may seem, but there is just one problem.

Like other gold medallists and Olympians, Chelangat has never met the Head of State, has never been accorded the privilege of a grand reception at the airport, has never been contacted or congratulated for her wins by any sports ministry official, not even those from her county, Kericho, and worse, her name is always missing when other world beaters are rewarded for their exploits.

Recently, when the Kenyan team to the world championship was awarded each a house and cash award of Sh1 million, Nancy watched the news on their 14-inch Vitron TV and afterwards, she pressed the off switch on the remote a little too hard, threw it on the table and decided never to return to the field for training. She felt so neglected that she vowed to quit the sport. 

“I called my coach that day and asked him, is my gold medal different from those brought by the able bodied athletes? Is my victory so worthless? He didn’t have an answer for me so I told him I wouldn’t appear for training the following day. I really felt like giving up.

“Most of my fellow athletes hold jobs as police officers, and they are given those positions due to their sporting talent. Why not me? Even if I cannot see, my brother, who is my guide, can, why not give him that job? Or why can't I be given any job yet I am a champion like the other?” she wonders. 

On July 20, as she breasted the tape and clinched her first ever gold medal, and at the same time made history as Kenya’s first gold medal in the T11 category for the visually impaired, she fell to her knees and touched her forehead to the ground in prayer, as her brother and guide rushed to the stands and returned with the Kenyan flag so they could take pictures and bask in the pride of their accomplishment.

Chelangat is the greatest Para-athlete most people have never heard of. In my mind, she is also the most extraordinary athlete that this country has ever produced. During our discussion held in her father’s living room, which went deep into the night, she sat calmly on a sofa wearing a lovely grey Team Kenya track suit, gesturing gently as she spoke. Her coach, Paul Kemei, sat on one side and her brother and guide on the other side. Her mother and father sat listening outside to create room for the crew and I. Early in the interview, her bullish personality slipped through when she instructed us to call her Chelangat, “Chela” as most preferred, not Nancy. 

The house itself is located in Kalyet village, Kipkelion West constituency, 26 kilometres from Londiani junction. You will need a sturdy vehicle or a Probox to get there because there is about six kilometres of rough road from the main road to the house.

Inside the compound are two wooden structures with tin roofing almost covering the main house, which is made of stone. Sheep can be heard bleating in the nearby pen and the home is sandwiched on both sides by maize farms so vast you cannot see the next homestead.

According to The Guinness Book of Athletics Facts and Feats, “The smallest crowd to watch a world record was possibly 48 at John Muir College, Pasadena, on 11 July 1953, to see Fortune Gordien (USA) throw the discus. Seventy years on, it is difficult to imagine a world record being watched by so few souls. Even school games attract larger crowds.

But go watch the YouTube videos of Chelangat and other disabled athletes competing and you realise that, 20 years into the New Millennium, we are still in the era of discrimination. 

Poor marketing and investment in Para sports provides one part of the answer but the overarching explanation is simple. This is an era of shocking institutional discrimination.

“It is my brother who encouraged me to start running. He used to train Eric Sang, who is also a Para athlete, so when I came of age, he encouraged me and slowly convinced me to consider a career in athletics.

“At first, things were hard. People would stand on the streets and really laugh at me. They would say, ‘look at this one, how is she able to run yet she can’t see?’ I could hear them laugh and that really affected me. I almost gave up, but I’m glad that now, they understand my capabilities. I am a world champion,” she says while touching the medals on her neck affectionately.

Chelangat never wanted to be an athlete. Her childhood dream was to become a doctor. She went to the nearby Sokotek Special School but just after she completed her KCPE, the school was shut down due to lack of learners (the school had attracted only five pupils). The only teacher in the school packed and left.

Her father suggested that Chelangat retakes her final year and see if she could record better results, but she declined. By then, athletics was already running hot in her blood, and she had made up her mind to pursue it to the highest level. She put a full stop on education at that level, a decision she is yet to regret.

“I told my dad, there is no need for me to go back to school. It is better I concentrate on my athletics careers, so that I can be rich and build for you a house.”

Because few seem to recognise her abilities, Chelangat sometimes wonders whether her perception of victory only exists in her mind. She turned 25 this year and although she has been running since she was a teenager, her first global mark came in 2016 when she represented Kenya at the 2016 Summer Paralympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Guided by her brother, Geoffrey Rotich Kiplangat, she won the silver medal in the women's 1,500 metres T11 event.

The only prize she received for that was the Sh750,000 that the Olympics Committee awards players who medal in the various categories. The Olympics had ended a month earlier in Rio and as she boarded the flight back home after that race, she kept the bag that carried the silver medal on her laps and looked forward to a grand reception at JKIA. She imagined being welcomed by a troupe of traditional dancers, the sports minister and a battery of journalists, then later, a luncheon in State House where she would take photos with President Uhuru Kenyatta and be awarded the Sh1 million like the able-bodied Olympians.

But to her dismay, she found nobody waiting at the airport. Sports CS Hassan Wario was nowhere to be seen and the journalists seemed unaware of her return. Not even the head of the Kenya National Paralympics Committee was at hand to receive her.

Her silver medal was proudly displayed on her chest in readiness for the photos, and upon realising that no triumphant entry awaited her, she yanked it off and threw it in her bag. Sensing her pain, her brother said no word. He held her close and guided her to the bus stop where they got the next shuttle back to Londiani.

Chelangat put the disappointment of defeat behind her and five years later, she made the team to the delayed 2020 Summer Paralympics in Tokyo, Japan. There, she won bronze in a race she describes as ‘extremely challenging.’ At the mixed zone immediately after the race, Chelangat proudly swung in, her face stained with tears of joy, and stood before the journalists. She heaped praises on her brother for guiding her to third place when she almost considered dropping out of the race due to a muscle pull.

She was overjoyed to have brought yet another Olympics medal, and once again she had high hopes of being acknowledged upon her return.

“When I got to the airport and there was nobody to show my medal to, I felt so bad because I had seen how the able-bodied athletes had been received just a few days earlier. I asked around and I was told that a letter had been written to the ministry and that I would get my day with the president, and some award from the government. I never saw any of it,” she says.

This time, the rejection hurt more, because just a year prior, she had yet again proven herself worthy of recognition by clinching bronze in the women's 1500 metres at the 2019 World Para Athletics Championships held in Dubai. She decided that for her to get the recognition she craved so much, she would work hard and win a gold medal in the next competition.

And then it happened. At 3.38am on July 20, as her parents followed the action in the 14-inch Vitron TV in their living room, Chelangat scooped a gold medal after finishing first in the women’s 1,500 meters T11 race in a time of 4:46.55. Surely, this time someone would be at hand to receive her since she had won gold at the World stage, right? Wrong. When she returned with her prestigious gold medal, she was met with the same cold reception. And when she watched the news the following day, she saw that Faith Kipyegon and other gold medallists had been to State House and had each been awarded a house, money and even cars.

“I wonder what difference there is between those who are able bodied and my daughter. When I look at her gold medal, it is the exact same one that the able-bodied medallists have. Why doesn’t the government consider disabled athletes? It is not fair. Gold is gold. Or how do you see it? If it is silver, it is silver. If is bronze, it is bronze,” Chela’s father, Koech, asks while turning the medals this way and that.

In his heyday, dad Koech ran 400m hurdles. Theirs is a family of seven siblings, although only Chelangat and her brother Geoffrey are into athletics. Their last born, Eric, seems to be taking after his father and is exploring short distance running.

“The moment this child was born and we found out she was blind, I just asked God to give her mother and I grace to take care of her. I consider her a gift from God because it is him who created her without eyes. I was never worried about her future, I always knew that she is a child of God and that God would take care of her.

“I watched the race the other day and I was really happy to see her win. It is a confirmation that God doesn’t abandon his children, whether able or disabled,” Koech said.

Unlike in able-bodied sports where each individual athlete controls his own destiny, runners who are blind rely heavily on their guides. Chelangat speaks fondly of her brother, her guide, who has stuck by her side from the beginning. Many visually impaired athletes have failed to advance in their careers because they lack a consistent guide.

Geoffrey, seems unable to leave Chelangat’s side. Whenever she needs to move or to greet someone. It is Geoffrey who prompts her. He consistently served her tea throughout our stay and helped her move from location to location while holding her hand. Watching them, you get a sense that blood is truly thicker than water.

“First of all, to be a guide, you have to be selfless. You have to dedicate your life to being the eyes of the other person. Not many people can do that,” Geoffrey says.

And sacrifice, he did. Before Chelangat came into the picture, Geoffrey was busy shaping up as an 800m athlete. He used to train hard to realise this ambition, but at the advice of Chelangat’s coach, Kemei, he shelved his ambition and dedicated her life to being her sister’s guide.

“When coach Kemei returned from India, he told me that he had seen blind people competing, and asked me whether Chelangat was interested in running. When I heard that, I went and asked her whether she was interested.

“She came with us for training for a few days but later stopped. At that time, I didn’t know that she had stopped training because she had heard people laughing at her on the streets, so I stopped bothering her. Then one day many months later, out of the blue, she asked if she could join coach Kemei and I for training. Of course I said yes!

“At first, we didn’t think she could do it, but after a while, she just kept coming. She began to enjoy the sport and in 2015, we started training seriously under coach Kemei,” says Geoffrey.

According to Kemei, Chelangat possesses a smooth blend of power and technique, which is her greatest strength.

“When I saw the bone and muscle structure when she first came for training with her brother, I knew that she could make a good athlete. However, initially we were both a little skeptical about whether she would have the mental fortitude and perseverance required of successful athletes, but by God’s grace she did it,” says her coach, who owns a training camp for under-20 athletes nearby. 

Amazingly, Chelangat isn’t the first visually impaired runner from Kenya . Henry Wanyoike, her childhood idol, excelled at 5,000 metres and 10,000 metres distances at the highest level. 

“Henry Wanyoike has received a lot of recognition, including corporate endorsements, yet Chelangat is also very accomplished and has never been recognised. Why is that?” poses coach Kemei.

Even though Chelangat knows that she deserves the recognition, she says it is not all there is to life. Her greatest desire, is for the government to build training facilities so that she doesn’t have to travel all the way to Kapsabet in search of good roads to train on.

“I cannot run on bad roads, so I have to travel far to do my roadwork training. It costs my brother and I Sh800 each to go to Kapsabet for training because here the road is not so good, and we don’t have gym facilities. If the government could look into this, and give me a gift, any gift for my accomplishments, I know I can break world records in future.”