I’M SO WORRIED ABOUT HER… FAITH WAS JUST 5 SECONDS FROM D.E.A.T.H

Late afternoon in Kaptagat. The sky bled red over the Rift Valley. Eliud Kipchoge stood frozen on the red dirt road, phone shaking in his hand. The video from Paris was still playing on loop.

Faith Kipyegon was on the blue track, motionless. Blood poured from her nose in thick streams. White foam bubbled from her mouth. Her watch screamed 210 beats per minute for 68 endless seconds.

Doctors rushed in, tilting her head back, forcing air into her lungs. One medic shouted “She’s not breathing!” while another pressed on her chest. The stadium fell deathly silent.

Eliud dropped to his knees right there on the dirt. Tears came instantly. The marathon king, the man who never cries, was sobbing like a child.

“I thought that was it,” he whispered to the handful of training partners who ran to him. “Five more seconds without oxygen and we would have lost her forever.”

The video had been sent by a terrified Kenyan team doctor with only three words: “Eliud, pray now.” It was filmed minutes after Faith collapsed following a brutal 1500m time trial at Stade de France.

What the world still doesn’t know is why it happened. Eliud does. And today, for the first time, he is telling the terrifying truth.

“Faith has been destroying herself,” he says, voice breaking. “She made a secret plan after the Olympics. A plan to become ‘unbeatable.’ She called it Project 3:44.”

The plan was simple on paper, insane in reality: drop her body fat to under 7%, cut sleep to four hours a night, train at 2,800 metres altitude twice a day, and take experimental supplements flown in from Europe.

She told no one except her pacemaker and one trusted coach. Not her parents. Not Athletics Kenya. Not even Eliud, until it was almost too late.

“I noticed she stopped answering my messages,” Eliud says. “Then I saw her in Nairobi last month. She looked like a ghost. Cheeks hollow, eyes sunken, hands trembling when she held coffee.”

He confronted her after a session. She smiled weakly and said, “I’m fine, uncle. I just want to run faster than any woman ever has.” Then she whispered the target: 3:44.99 for 1500 m.

Eliud begged her to stop. She refused. “If I don’t push until I break,” she told him, “someone else will.” Those were her exact words.

Yesterday in Paris, her body finally broke. The medical report Eliud received lists the damage: severe dehydration, rhabdomyolysis, internal bleeding from ruptured nasal capillaries, and a heart working so hard it started fibrillating.

Doctors say the nosebleed was the body’s emergency valve. Without it, her brain would have shut down in seconds. The blood saved her life.

Faith was rushed to a Paris hospital and placed in intensive care. She regained consciousness at 2 a.m., asking only one question: “Did I run fast enough?”

When Eliud heard that, he cried again. “She still doesn’t understand,” he says. “This is not about records anymore. This is about staying alive.”

Today he decided to speak publicly, against the wishes of team officials who wanted everything kept quiet. He doesn’t care about politics anymore.

“I am telling the world because someone has to stop this madness,” he says, eyes red and swollen. “Faith is my little sister. If speaking out saves her, I will scream from every mountain in Kenya.”

He reveals that Faith had been injecting legal but extreme iron supplements, drinking only 400 ml of fluid per day, and running 40 km long runs on top of double threshold sessions. All while weighing just 39 kg.

“Her coach thought she was joking when she said she wanted to reach 6% body fat,” Eliud says. “She wasn’t joking. She was ready to die for it.”

Right now Faith is stable but still under observation. Doctors have banned all training for minimum three months. She is not allowed to see a track.

Eliud has already booked a flight to Paris. He will sit by her bed and tell her what he never said clearly enough: “You are enough. 3:49 is enough. 3:51 is enough. Just breathe, Faith. Just live.”

As the sun finally disappeared behind the hills of Kaptagat, Eliud looked toward the sky and spoke softly, as if she could hear him across the ocean.

“Little sister, the records can wait. Your heart cannot. Come home. We will run again, slowly, together, when you are ready. But please, come home alive.”

Kenya is praying tonight. The queen of 1500 m almost lost her crown forever, chasing a dream that nearly became a grave.

Eliud Kipchoge, the unbreakable man, is broken. And he will not rest until Faith Kipyegon understands that some limits are there to save us, not to be destroyed.