I've shown other women that we don't have to limit ourselves: Faith Kipyegon

They call her the ‘Smiling Destroyer'. It's almost an oxymoron of a nickname, but then, when you interact with Faith Kipyegon , you can see she certainly smiles a lot. And if you're someone who has closely followed her track exploits, you'd have to admit she stands guilty of having caused a notable amount of destruction too.

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At 31, Kipyegon has pretty much done it all. Olympic champion? Check. The Kenyan star, in fact, happens to be the first and only woman to win the gold medal in her pet event, the 1500 metres, in three Olympic Games (Rio 2016, Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024). World Champion? Check. Not only has Kipyegon been crowned world champion three times in the 1500m, at the 2023 edition in Budapest, she completed the double by winning the 5000m gold as well.

World record holder ? Check. As of today, Kipyegon holds the world record in both, the mile (4:07.64) and the 1500m (3:48.68), clocking the latter just last month.

As if all this wasn't enough, there she was in June, attempting to become the first woman to run the mile under four minutes in a much hyped event titled Breaking4 hosted by Nike. She may have fallen short, for once, but she conveyed what she wanted to.

“It's a kind of mindset,” Kipyegon told reporters during a virtual interaction on Thursday ahead of next month's World Athletics Championships . “If you set your mind that I want to achieve this goal and do this... it's all about the mind and also about the preparation and being patient.



“It's also about what more you still want to achieve for the next generation to look up to you. For me, the goal was to be the first woman to run under four minutes in the mile. I didn't do what I wanted to do. It was a message sent out that it is possible one day, one time, and if it did not come my way, it will be someone one day. One day, there will be a woman running under four minutes in the next generation or in our generation.”

It's why, Kipyegon underlined, she keeps going, despite everything she has already achieved. “I've achieved all the medals. I have achieved in Olympics and the World Championships. But I still have the drive to show the other women that we are capable of doing what we have to do in this world so that they believe they too can do it,” she said.

It's crazy in a way, even for Kipyegon, to process what all she has gone on to accomplish after taking a break in 2018 to give birth to her daughter Alyn when she was just 24. Although not uncommon today to see women across sports making an attempt to return to elite competition after giving birth, Kipyegon's case stands out, with two Olympic titles and three World Championship golds coming after she became a mom.

“It's not easy as an elite athlete and also as a mom, but if you have people around you who believe in you and support you, that is the easiest thing,” she said. “Having Alyn has been my strongest point, as I came back strong and I'm still running very fast. I'm still breaking the world records, which is unbelievable even for me as an athlete.

“Sometimes, it's not easy to come back and break records after maternal leave, but I believe that I've shown other women that we don't have to limit ourselves. “Sometimes one can be afraid of wanting to start a family because (you think) ‘I don't know if I will come back as strong as I was before'. But I think I'm a good example to them that, you can be even stronger when you go to maternal leave and come back to sport.”