Faith Kipyegon exclusive on her winning mentality at Paris 2024: "I want to do this for the next young girl"
There she stood, her petite figure barely visible bunched among runners at the start line of a junior cross-country race. Young and fresh-faced, Faith Kipyegon was blissfully barefoot at the beginning of her journey.
Despite the primary school girl getting much attention for being a fierce competitor, the then 16-year-old was surprisingly calm. She was dominating the Kenyan cross-country circuit, upsetting experienced juniors, and was a race away from making Kenya's world cross-country team.
“How I started athletics was like magic or something. I started when I was in primary school, back at home, where I used to do training in the school,” Kipyegon tells Olympics.com.
“I used to play football, gymnastics. After that we got a teacher [who] introduced us to running. I started running and knowing that athletics might [get] me somewhere.”
She was right, and shortly after burst onto the global stage as a fourth-place finisher at the 2010 World Cross Country Championships, the youngest athlete in the top 20.
But the Kenyan was just getting started. Over the past decade, she has dominated women’s middle-distance running, not only winning World and Olympic titles but also setting World Records that continue to define her legacy.
“I have been performing for many years and getting the gold medals,” she continued.
“I want to do my best and motivate the young girls and young women to know that Faith has come a long way, and she’s still performing at the Olympic level and getting these medals, especially the gold medal.”
The 30-year-old is competing at her fourth Games at Paris 2024, and has the chance to win a third-consecutive Olympic 1500m title.
Faith Kipyegon: The barefoot runner who captivated the world
The world first watched the diminutive runner at the 2010 World Cross Country in Poland’s northern city of Bydgoszcz. As she had done for most of her life, running to school from her village in western Kenya’s Rift Valley, she was comfortable running barefoot even in those freezing conditions. She sealed fourth place behind three of her compatriots.
A year later, armed with experience from the previous year, and still shoeless, a determined Kipyegon cracked the field for her first global title at the World Cross Country in Punta Umbria, Spain.
Kipyegon then burst into track racing a few months later with the World U18 crown, setting a new event record in the 1500m.
After winning another gold at the 2012 World U20 Championships, Kipyegon had the psychological edge she needed to leap into Kenya’s senior category, which lacked depth after the departure of the 2008 Olympic champion Nancy Jebet Lagat.
Aged 18, Kipyegon was selected to compete at London 2012, as the youngest Kenyan team member, where she teamed up with now turned marathoner Hellen Obiri.
“I was seeing myself as a young girl, coming from junior, and still developing towards the senior category and finding ways, I did my best,” she said in a recent exclusive interview with Olympics.com from Kaptagat, where she trains with another double Olympic champion Eliud Kipchoge under the tutelage of their renowned coach Patrick Sang.
Faith Kipyegon on how Olympic moments changed her
Kipyegon was a World silver medallist going into Rio 2016. But in Brazil, her era of dominance over the women’s 1500m truly began.
“Rio Olympics was my best experience. Coming from world championships and the world juniors and still growing as an elite athlete and being [at] your second Olympics, you are like you want to achieve the gold medal,” she recalled of that career-defining moment that shot her to athletics stardom.
“I saw [Genzebe] Dibaba was there, Sifan [Hassan] was there, but for me, I just believed in myself and just believed in the training. I was like, ‘I want to do this for my country. I want to do this for myself. I want to do this for the next young girl to know that if a young girl can win a gold medal, why not us’?”
“Many people benefited from that gold medal,” she added, smiling at the warm recollection of that chapter of her storied life. “My village got electricity after that.”
Using that momentum, Kipyegon became first Kenyan woman to win the 1500m at the 2017 World Championships before taking a break from the sport in order to give birth. She returned to take silver at the 2019 Worlds.
“I won my first gold medal as a mum, after coming back from maternity leave. I was running with experience and at the same time [for] people back at home, especially my daughter. [Motherhood] changed me a lot, mentally.”
Faith Kipyegon at a long run training session in Kaptagat.
Faith Kipyegon's World Records
By May 2023, Kipyegon was unbeaten in 15 races over her favoured 1500m, but her personal best of 3:50.37 bothered her. She’d come agonisingly close to breaking Dibaba’s eight-year World Record, which was just 0.30 seconds faster.
Using that fire, Kipyegon went on to shatter the 1500m, mile, and 5000m World Records in just two months in the middle of 2023.
Racing in 2024, she bettered her World Record to 3:49.04 in what was only her second race of the season. So where did that motivation come from to better her own world's best time?
“It’s the love of the sport. Wanting to inspire the young generation and the young girls around the world, that you can also take athletics as a profession. Going out there running early in the morning and going to camps, staying there, from Monday to Saturday,” offered the daughter of two former school runners," she said.
“Because we as athletes take what we have given by God [as] our talent. To inspire the young generation and upcoming athletes to know that if you take it seriously, it can put you on another level in the world.”
Faith Kipyegon: “If you have that pain, it's success”
The six-time world medallist is consistent but relentless when it comes to practice.
The backbone of her training is a 30km run that she normally does with 20 other athletes in Kaptagat. That endurance training has made her an outstanding runner over the shorter distance, and the 5000m, where she achieved a double at the 2023 worlds. So, what’s the weakest part of her training?
“I love running. I love doing training. The challenging part is just waking up early in the morning. That’s the hardest part… Wake up early in the morning when people are still sleeping, and you are just outside [on the] road, running and finding a way to be successful,” she answered.
“If you are in training, and you don't feel pain, next thing you are going to a race, and you don’t perform good. But if you have that pain, it's a success. So, you feel pain today, I think it will be a successful tomorrow to achieve what you have been feeling pain [for].”
No runner has ever won three Olympic titles in the 1500m, and Kipyegon could achieve that at Paris 2024.
“The dream is just to get that gold medal…bring that gold medal home,” she said.
“I've been talking about legacy for many years, and I hope going towards the Paris Olympics, it will be my first legacy to leave in 1500… If I get that gold medal over to 1500.”