Comeback girl Chebet hopes to achieve more
Despite myriad challenges weighing her down, she has exhibited desire to shrug them off and re-start her passion for athletics.
Vicky Chebet, 32, is not about to let go the love for athletics. She had shone in the past and now she is raring to go in a bid to re-start it.
In 2012 she competed in Palentino Half Marathon, Italy where she finished second. Before that in 2006, Chebet ran in the then Standard Chartered Half Marathon returning a poor 20th.
But she did not lose hope and went on to hone her skills, a move which earned her place in the then Palentino Half Marathon.
She started running while in primary school and used to compete in long-distance track events culminating in her first major competition -Standard Chartered Half Marathon in 2006 while still a pupil.
“ I love athletics since my childhood and I am very determine to re-start it and conquer the world despite challenges weighing me down,” Chebet adds and discloses that while at Rift Valley Institute of Science and Technology as a student she used to compete in 5,000m race and cross country events. She left the institute in 2010.
Chebet, a widowed mother of one, grew up as orphan. Her husband passed on in 2014. “Problems bombarded me from all corners. It reached a stage that I asked myself, why me? But I have come to realise, it is God’s plan,” she says.
Being the first born child in her family, she took care of her nine siblings before she got married in 2012 .
Now a tea picker with multinational tea companies in Kericho, Chebet says: “Life had become difficult after losing both parents and my husband. The money I get from this job goes towards supporting my siblings and my family.”
The situation forced her to drop athletics and concentrated on what she termed as “a matter of life and death.” But she still had the dream of becoming a celebrated athlete.
She thanks Kericho governor Paul Chepkwony for supported her.
