Ugandan Olympic runner Rebecca Cheptegei, who died after allegedly being doused in petrol and set alight by her former partner, was buried Saturday with full military honours at her ancestral place in Uganda’s northeast.
Cheptegei, 33, returned to her home in the highlands of western Kenya, an area popular with international runners for its high altitude training facilities, after coming 44th in the marathon at the Paris Olympics on August 11.
It would be her final race.
Three weeks later her former boyfriend, Dickson Ndiema Marangach, allegedly attacked Cheptegei as she returned from church with her two daughters and younger sister in the village of Kinyoro, Kenya police and her family said.
Her father Joseph Cheptegei told Reuters that his daughter had approached police at least three times to file complaints against Marangach, most recently on Aug. 30, two days before the alleged attack by her former partner.
She suffered burns to 80% of her body and succumbed to her injuries four days later.
“I don’t think I am going to make it,” she told her father while being treated in hospital, he said.
“If I die, just bury me at home in Uganda.”
Hundreds of mourners, including fellow Olympians from Uganda and Kenya, gathered for her funeral in Bukwo in Uganda’s northeast near the border with Kenya.
In speeches she was fondly eulogised as a hero, a mother and sister, and afterwards her body was lowered into her grave minutes after 5 p.m. (1200 GMT)
She was buried in full military honours, including a gun salute by the Ugandan military of which she was a member.
“She embodied the admirable spirit of resilience, selflessness, generosity and hard work, which worked together to catapult her to international glory,” Kipchumba Murkomen, sports Cabinet Secretary said as he eulogised the athlete.
Her death, he said, had marked “a tragic end to a blossoming life.”
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