Ronald Kwemoi’s Long Journey From U20 World Record Holder to Olympic Silver Medalist

During the 2024 professional track season, eight men combined to break 3:30 for 1500 meters a total of 20 times. Both of those marks are the second-most all-time for a single year, behind only last year, when 11 men combined for 25 sub-3:30s. Between supershoes, pace lights, a crop of rising talents, and a self-proclaimed pacemaker leading the way, we are living in a golden age of 1500-meter running. It has never been easier to run fast.

That was not the case a decade ago. In 2011, no one broke 3:30 all year. 2012 and 2013 were more typical, with three men going under each year. If a sub-3:30 were to come at all, it would usually come at the Herculis meet in mid-July. Monaco was the place to run fast, and if things panned out, the winner and perhaps one other would end up in the 3:20s.

Which is what made the 2014 Monaco 1500 so astounding. Billed as a world record attempt, Kenya’s Asbel Kiprop would hold the lead until 100 meters to go when he was passed by countryman Silas Kiplagat, who won the race in 3:27.64. Behind him came a display of 1500-meter running never seen before (and scarcely since). The top seven finishers all broke 3:30, more than doubling the previous record for sub-3:30s in a race (three). Even now, only one other race, the 2023 Bislett Games in Oslo, can match that depth.

The results that day read like a who’s who of the best milers of the 2010s. Kiplagat. Kiprop (banned four years for EPO in 2018). Ayanleh Souleiman. Abdelaati Iguider. Nick Willis. Leo Manzano and Matthew Centrowitz — neither American broke 3:30, but both ran pbs. Manzano would never run faster than the 3:30.98 he clocked that day.

Monaco men’s 1500m results, July 18, 2014

If those names feel like they’re out of a different era, well…it was a different era. The race was 10 years ago. Most of these guys have since retired or are on their last legs as pros. When they are spoken about these days, it is in the past tense.

That’s how it was for Ronald Kwemoi a year ago. Kwemoi, who ran a world U20 record of 3:28.81 for third in that Monaco race, was the revelation of 2014, bursting onto the scene at age 18, winning his Diamond League debut in Lausanne, and earning a silver medal at the Commonwealth Games. But it was this race in Monaco, where he ran a world U20 record of 3:28.81, that defined him for so long.

Initially, that was not a bad thing. Kwemoi was the first teenager ever under 3:30, his time well under the previous world U20 record of 3:30.24 set by Cornelius Chirchir in 2002. Even now, in the era of phenoms in super spikes, no U20 athlete has run faster than Kwemoi. Not Jakob Ingebrigtsen (3:30.16). Not Niels Laros (3:29.54). No one.

His coach, the legendary Italian Renato Canova, believed Kwemoi had the ability and the drive to break world records in the 1500 and the 5,000 meters. In 2016, Canova famously guaranteed, on this very website, that Kwemoi would win the Olympic 5,000-meter title at Tokyo 2020.

But as Kwemoi aged, he seemed fated to go from the guy who ran 3:28 at 18 to the guy who peaked at 18. Kwemoi would win a few more Diamond Leagues, would make it to an Olympics and two World Championships. But he failed to qualify for the 2021 Olympics, finishing 5th at the Kenyan trials, and largely disappeared over the next two years, finishing a total of just three track races across 2022 and 2023.

As 2024 began, Kwemoi, then 28, was the only man among the top nine from that famous 2014 Monaco race never to have earned a global medal. And there was little reason to expect that to change.

***

Self-coached to 3:28

If you watched this year’s Olympic 5,000-meter final in Paris, you know how this story ends. Kwemoi eventually came good, holding off Grant Fisher to earn the silver, Kenya’s first medal in the event for 12 years.

Track & field has plenty of comeback stories. “Talent doesn’t go away” — the phrase sounds familiar. But Kwemoi’s story is extreme on both ends. Kwemoi is not just talented, he is the fastest teenager in history. And the comeback reached dizzying heights — runner-up at the Olympic Games, one step shy of the highest high in the sport. So just how did it happen?

A native of the Mount Elgon District in western Kenya, Kwemoi first made a name for himself at the 2013 Kenyan cross country championships, where he won the junior race as a 17-year-old. At that point, Kwemoi says, he was splitting his time between Iten, where he was largely self-coached, and Japan, where he ran for the Komori corporate team. In Iten, he would hop in workouts with other groups. When he needed a track session, he would go on Tuesdays to the dirt Kamariny Track south of town where many of the area’s best runners trained. Thursdays, he would run fartleks. Sometimes he would train with marathoners like Wilson Kipsang, who set the world record in 2013. Other times, Kwemoi would do his own thing.

That took him to 3:28, but after failing to make the World Championship team in 2015, he began working with Canova the next year. Writing on the LetsRun.com messageboard in 2017, Canova described Kwemoi as an “aerobic animal” who was running 110-130 miles per week (Kwemoi ran 27:33 for 10,000 in November 2016, an early hint of his promise at longer distances). In many ways, Kwemoi’s approach to the 1500 was perfectly-suited to the way the event is run in 2024, marrying a kick with an enormous aerobic engine.

“I think that when I ran the 1500, the last couple years, if I got the races running faster like now, maybe I win easy because I have the kick from 150,” Kwemoi says.

That’s the way the event was trending in 2019, Kwemoi’s final global 1500 final, where he finished 7th in a race won by Timothy Cheruiyot in 3:29.26. But in Kwemoi’s two best opportunities for gold, he felt he never got the chance to show his true capabilities.

Bad breaks and a never-ending injury cycle

Kwemoi was in great shape entering 2016 Olympics in Rio, having defeated Kiprop and most of the world’s top milers to win the Monaco 1500 just a month before the Games. Kwemoi won his semifinal but fell with just over two laps to go in the final and finished last. Sometimes, falls are unavoidable, but Kwemoi says a “bad calculation” was partly to blame for his misfortune.

Global 1500 finals were much slower in the mid-2010s than the 2020s, and the king of the event back then was Kiprop, whose incredible last lap often compensated for any tactical errors and carried him to three straight world titles. At the previous year’s World Championship in Beijing, Kiprop had hung near the back for most of the race before exploding from 10th to 1st over the final 250 meters.

Ahead of the Olympic final, Kwemoi, who had never run in a global championship before Rio, says Team Kenya’s coaches told him to stay in the back before pushing over the final 500 meters. But with the race going out so slowly (2:16 through 800 meters), the pack was bunched too closely together, and the long-legged Kwemoi, running near the back, went down when Ayanleh Souleiman clipped him from behind 650m into the race. Looking back, Kwemoi regrets not running his own race.

“I start using the calculation of Asbel and you see, I took a bad calculation,” Kwemoi says.

A year later, Kwemoi was once again one of the favorites heading into the World Championships in London. In May, he ran a pb of 7:28 to win a loaded 3,000 in Doha featuring Yomif Kejelcha, Olympic silver medalist Paul Chelimo, and that year’s eventual 5,000 world champion Muktar Edris. At the Prefontaine Classic, he beat Elijah Manangoi and Timothy Cheruiyot, who would go on to finish 1-2 at Worlds, to win the Bowerman Mile. But Kwemoi developed a stress fracture before Worlds and failed to make the final.

The next year is when the serious problems truly began, as Kwemoi developed a nagging hamstring injury that would not go away. In four of the six seasons from 2018-23, Kwemoi finished one or fewer 1500-meter races. Midway through another lost campaign in 2023, Kwemoi spoke with Canova and told him he was moving on. Kwemoi relocated to Kaptagat, where he began working under coach Patrick Sang and living in the same Global Sports Communication training camp as Eliud Kipchoge and Faith Kipyegon.

“In Iten, in that time, we had a small camp, not a big camp like in Kaptagat,” Kwemoi says. “In the small camp, we did not have all the equipment…I speak with Canova and tell him I need to go to Kaptagat because I have injuries for five years now.”

***

Turning the tide

With more resources available to him in Kaptagat, Kwemoi was able to get healthy toward the end of 2023, just in time for an Olympic year. He clicked with Sang and the ethos of the Global camp. Under Canova, Kwemoi had been a believer in the grind, in the discipline required to become the best in the world. And when you spend six days a week in Kipchoge’s camp, you have little choice other than to be disciplined.

“Nobody can disturb the athlete,” Kwemoi says. “I think it’s a good environment for me. Training from there is good. This is something that [allows] me to build morale to stay there.”

Kwemoi’s confidence was growing, but he had a decision to make. His comeback under Sang was proceeding, as the Kenyans like to say, slowly by slowly. Sang eased Kwemoi into things by having him run some cross country races in Spain last fall. They went surprisingly well, with Kwemoi finishing 2nd in Atapuerca and claiming wins in San Sebastian and Seville. But he and Sang were worried there would not be enough time for Kwemoi to work up to the faster running required to succeed in the 1500. In December, they decided that Kwemoi would focus on the 5,000 in 2024.

I ask Kwemoi, which event does he prefer?

He laughs. It is a lot easier to say he enjoys the 5,000 now that he has an Olympic silver medal hanging around his neck. But back then, it was a hard decision at abandon his first love.

“Now I like both events,” Kwemoi says. “But my favorite is 1500 because I started in the 1500.”

Kwemoi’s victory at the Kenyan Olympic trials this year came as a surprise. He had opened up the track season by running 13:02 at the Xiamen Diamond League in April, a 12-second personal best, though that was only good for 7th place (and 4th among Kenyans). His next two races did not go to plan — he dropped out of the Suzhou Diamond League a week later, then finished 10th in the Kenyan Olympic 10,000 trials at the Pre Classic in May. Yet when he returned to Kenya for the 5,000 trials, both Kwemoi and Sang believed he could win based on the workouts he had been running.

“I know I [could] win because I know the training I do,” Kwemoi says.

Kwemoi established himself as an Olympic contender by winning the trials, beating Jacob Krop, who had medalled at the previous two World Championships. But he still had plenty of work to do in Paris. The 5,000-meter heats were both slow, tactical affairs that devolved into chaos, with a total of six men falling to the track across three separate incidents. Kwemoi, recalling his previous Olympic experience, was worried he would be one of them.

But Kwemoi stayed on his feet to advance to a final that was suddenly lacking some major names. 2021 silver medalist Mo Ahmed had fallen in the heats. Luis Grijalva, 4th at the previous two Worlds, picked up an injury just before the Games and didn’t advance. Ugandan stars Joshua Cheptegei and Jacob Kiplimo had both withdrawn from the Olympics following the 10,000. Jakob Ingebrigtsen remained the heavy favorite for gold, but the other two medals were very much up for grabs.

Ironically, it was the same failed strategy from Rio 2016 that carried Kwemoi to a medal in Paris. With two laps to go, Kwemoi found himself in a near-identical position as his last Olympic final eight years earlier: 13th place in a slow race, with a number of tightly-bunched bodies to navigate past if he were to reach the podium. When Hagos Gebrhiwet made his move to string out the field with 600 meters remaining, Kwemoi had to respond more aggressively than anyone because he was so far back, moving from 10th to 4th from 500m to 300m to go. This time, there was no fall.

That big move had come with a cost, though. Kwemoi covered that segment in 26.1 seconds — the fastest 200m split by anyone in the entire race. Kwemoi was running out of steam, each of his final three 100m segments slower than the one that preceded it, but he had just enough to hold off Grant Fisher, Dominic Lobalu, and Gebrhiwet for the silver as Ingebrigtsen sprinted away for gold. Kwemoi, no longer defined by that one race in Monaco a decade ago in Monaco, had his medal, at long last.

***

Grand Slam Track…and sub-13:00?

After his Olympic medal in Paris, Kwemoi, who has a four-year-old son with his partner, Ugandan steeplechaser Stella Chesang, has options. Does he stay in the 5,000? Try to move back down to the 1500? Add the 10,000? Incredibly, he’s still never broken 13:00 for 5,000. Would he chase a fast time there?

“I think under 12:40,” Kwemoi says, when I ask how fast he could run in an all-out paced race.

Kwemoi has already chosen his first move: he has signed with Grand Slam Track as a Racer in the 3,000/5,000m category for the 2025 season, meaning he is locked into running that double four times next year. With $100,000 to the winner at each meet, GST offers the opportunity for some big paydays, and the non-rabbited format should fit right into Kwemoi’s wheelhouse as former 1500 star. Kwemoi also believes that the format will help prepare him for whatever event he runs in Tokyo next year.

“This can give me a lot of experience for World Championships,” Kwemoi says.

The first priority, though, is staying healthy. Kwemoi raced three times after Paris this year, running 7:31 for 5th in the Silesia Diamond League before disastrous efforts in Rome (13th, 13:19) and Brussels (10th, 13:35). Kwemoi said it was his old hamstring injury popping up again, but he’s trying to stay optimistic.

“It’s not bad now,” Kwemoi says. “I think it’s good now.”

Whatever else he chooses to pursue next year, Kwemoi believes that he has found a winning formula with Sang. If he can stay disciplined and stay healthy, who knows how far it will take him?