By Victor Oluwaseun Olabisi
Faith Chebet had arrived in Cairo as an 800m and 1,500m runner. However she left with a FASU Games gold medal in an event she had never competed before.
The Kenyan spent her athletics career learning how to run fast over 800m and 1,500m. But the 5,000m which she won gold in was a different terrain. Five kilometres, twelve and a half laps of the track. This was a race that demanded patience and enough physical and mental strength to keep going when the legs begin to ask questions.
Chebet had never participated in it before. But on the day she finally did, it was at Africa’s largest sporting event for Universities and the third-year education Student at the Kisii University did something even more unexpected. She won.
Her victory at the 12th All Africa University Games in Cairo was built around a decision she had made long before the final lap which was to simply wait. “I knew that I would the advantage in the last leg and that it would save me” she said. The race unfolded exactly as she expected. Chebet described the field as strong and the contest as highly tactical with the athletes staying together and refusing to give one another an easy advantage.
For much of it, she was comfortable. “I was just relaxing, sitting last” she said. Then came the final lap an that was where the race changed. Chebet knew the athletes around her were strong. She also knew that her best chance was not to try to win the race early. She had spent the distance conserving what she had and waited for the moment when instinct and speed could take over. “These girls are very strong and we are the same” she recalled telling herself. “But what can define me more is the last lap.”
The strategy had worked. For Chebet, the gold medal was the latest step in a year that has already shown her potential beyond the events she knows best. Earlier this year, she won her race at the Kenya Universities Sports Federation National Cross Country Championships. Yet the 5,000m in Cairo represented something else entirely. It was a test of whether the athlete she had become over 800m and 1,500m could stretch herself into a distance she had never experienced competitively.
She had spent about a year preparing across both shorter and longer-distance work, she explained and had been training in camp before travelling to Egypt. The transition to 5000m required more than simply running further. “If you want to run the long distance very well, you need to do long runs most of the time and do the speed work at the same time” she said. That combination may now open another door for the promising youngster.
Chebet’s ambitions extend beyond university sport. When asked what she wants next, she spoke about becoming a champion for Kenya, a goal that places her in a country where distance running carries an extraordinary tradition and where young athletes grow up with some of the sport’s biggest names as reference points. One of those names is Faith Kipyegon for Chebat. For her, the admiration is personal and apart from the first name which they share, Chebet says that the Faith Kipyegon “inspires her more”.
Kipyegon has become one of the defining figures in global middle-distance running winning Olympic and world titles while also moving successfully between the 1,500m and longer distances. Kenya’s other great modern distance star, Beatrice Chebet, has similarly demonstrated how far an athlete can go beyond a single event, winning Olympic gold in both the 5,000m and 10,000m at Paris 2024.
Chebet Education is not claiming to be either of them. She is asking for the opportunity to learn. “If I had the chance to meet Faith Kipyegon, I would just want her to help me” she said, explaining that she wants guidance to identify the things she lacks and improve her training. That desire for improvement runs through the rest of her life as well.
At Kisii University, athletics has existed alongside her studies rather than replacing them. She describes running as something she has pursued almost like a hobby while discipline has allowed her to keep her academic work and athletics moving together. “Being focused is the most important thing” she said.
The 5,000m was supposed to be a new experience. Instead, it became a gold-medal opportunity. And as Chebet stood at the end of those twelve and a half laps, the distance she had never raced before had given her a new frontier to explore. Perhaps she can reproduce the performance again and even consistently.