Wilson Kiprugut

Wilson Kiprugut medal table
Long distance runner
Kenya
Olympic games
silver	1968 Mexico City	800 m
bronze	1964 Tokyo	800 m
Commonwealth Games
silver	1966 Kingston	880 yd
Pan-African Games
gold	1965 Brazzaville	400 m
gold	1965 Brazzaville	800 m

Wilson Chuma Kiprugut (* 1938 in Kericho , Rift Valley Province ) is a former Kenyan athlete who primarily appeared in the 800-meter run . In 1964 he became the first Kenyan in history to win a medal at the Olympic Games .

Career

Wilson Kiprugut, 1968.

Kiprugut grew up in Kericho and was prepared for his competitive sports career by long walks to school in the Kenyan highlands. During his time at the Sitotwet Intermediate School , he began to take part in competitions. The tea manufacturer Brooke Bond , for whom he worked as an assistant, rewarded his success with small prizes, so that he soon concentrated more and more on running. At the East and Central African Championships in Nairobi in 1958 , he first took part in a national championship. From 1959 to 1961 Kiprugut completed training in the Kenyan army. He then started at the British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Perth in 1962 in the 880-yard run and in the 4-by-440-yard relay, but did not get beyond the preliminary round.

At this time he was discovered by the British athletics trainer John Velzian and brought to Nairobi , where he trained together with the later Olympic champion Kipchoge Keino . Kiprugut made his international breakthrough just two years later at the 1964 Olympic Games in Tokyo . In the first round of the 800 meter competition, he clearly prevailed as the winner of his heat. In the semifinals, he qualified second in 1: 46.1 minutes at the same time as the winner of the run, George Kerr , for the final. Both runners undercut the old Olympic record by two tenths of a second. In the final, four runners stayed below this new record. Kiprugut finished third in 1: 45.9 minutes behind Peter Snell (1: 45.1 minutes) and Bill Crothers (1: 45.6 minutes) and was the first Kenyan ever to win an Olympic medal. Kiprugut started in Tokyo in the 400-meter run , but was eliminated in the quarter-finals with a time of 47.7 s.

Thanks to his success at the Olympic Games, Kiprugut came to the first Pan-African Games in Brazzaville the following year as a celebrated star . There he won the gold medal in a superior manner both over 400 and over 800 meters. In 1966 he finished second in the 880- yard race at the British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Kingston behind Noel Clough and ahead of George Kerr.

Kiprugut celebrated his last major success at the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City . He won the silver medal in the 800 meter run with a personal best of 1: 44.5 minutes. In the final sprint he only had to admit defeat to the Australian Ralph Doubell , who set Peter Snell's existing world record with his winning time of 1: 44.3 min.

After the end of his active career, Kiprugut stayed with the Kenyan Army until 1974 and then took a job with Brooke Bond , which he followed until 1997. The father of four children owns a wheat farm near Molo and cultivates tea and breeds cattle on his farm in Kericho. Wilson Kiprugut is 1.78 m tall and had a competition weight of 71 kg.

Web links

• Wilson Kiprugut in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )
• Der Spiegel : High altitude athletes - short breath , October 14, 1968
• labatet.com: Kenya's forgotten sports heroes: Labatet's exclusive story of Olympic hero Wilson Kiprugut araap Chumo , February 24, 2009