2019 World Champion Timothy Cheruiyot Has Been Training With Niels Laros’ Group in South Africa To Start Off 2025

Cheruiyot, who was 11th in the Olympic 1500m final, is experimenting with a new setup to start 2025

Kenya’s Timothy Cheruiyot, the 2019 world champion at 1500 meters and 2021 Olympic silver medalist, has been training alongside rising star Niels Laros of the Netherlands to start 2025. Cheruiyot is currently wrapping up a three-week training stint with Laros’ group, which is overseen by Polish coach Tomasz Lewandowski, in Dullstroom, South Africa. Later this week, Cheruiyot will travel with the group 200 miles west to Potchefstroom, where they will put in another three weeks of altitude training before Cheruiyot heads home to Nairobi.

Cheruiyot, 29, has worked with coach Bernard Ouma of the Rongai Athletics Club since 2014 and has been one of the world’s top 1500-meters during throughout much of that span. From 2017-22, Cheruiyot won four Diamond League titles and finished no lower than 6th in four global championship appearances, including three medals. However, in 2023, Cheruiyot failed to make the World Championship final while battling an injury to his patellar tendon.

Cheruiyot showed improved form last year, running 3:28.71 to rank #5 in the world for 2024. He finished second in four Diamond Leagues, including Oslo, where he was just .03 behind a diving Jakob Ingebrigtsen, and the final in Brussels, where he edged out Olympic champion Cole Hocker by .01. But Cheruiyot failed to win a Diamond League for the third consecutive year and came away disappointed with his Olympic performance, finishing just 11th in Paris.

“Tim wants to do things a little bit different and he needs to think out of the box a little bit more,” Cheruiyot’s agent Malcolm Anderson told LetsRun.com. “He’s had a fantastic run with a structure in place for many, many years in Nairobi. But he’s at a stage where you have to make a few adjustments.”

An opportunity for change presented itself when Lewandowski, who knew Cheruiyot from their interactions on the professional circuit, invited the Kenyan to join his group for a training camp this winter. Initially, Lewandowski’s group had planned on training in Kenya, but that became unfeasible and the group went to Dullstroom (elevation: 6,500+ feet) instead.

 

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Anderson said that Cheruiyot is fully healthy once again and so far has had a positive experience in South Africa. But Cheruiyot is not yet an official member of the group.

“When he goes back [to Nairobi], that’s when we’re going to make a few more decisions in the leadup to his outdoor season,” Anderson said. “There’s the open door for being involved in Tomasz’s group. And this is [Tim] checking that environment out and seeing how that goes. There’s no commitment from Tim’s side at the moment.”

Cheruiyot remains one of the best in the world but has been in the same system for a decade and stagnated in recent years. It is common for athletes in that position to seek out a new stimulus. A new coach/training group would fit the bill.

Lewandowski’s group would offer a number of potential benefits, notably the opportunity train with the 19-year-old Laros and his 22-year-old Dutch countryman Stefan Nillessen, who finished 6th and 9th in last year’s Olympic final. Adding Cheruiyot would give the group three Olympic men’s 1500 finalists; no other training group had more than one.

Cheruiyot formerly trained with 2017 world champ Elijah Manangoi at Rongai AC, but Manangoi was banned two years for whereabouts failures starting in 2019 and Anderson said the two have not trained together since Manangoi’s ban expired at the end of 2021. In recent years, Cheruiyot’s main training partner has been 2021 World U20 champion Vincent Keter (3:31 pb, 9th at the Kenyan Olympic trials).

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Lewandowski, who works as a coach for the Dutch federation, is based at the Dutch Olympic Training Center in Papendal. Anderson said that joining the group would not present any sponsorship issues given Cheruiyot, like Laros and Nillessen, is sponsored by Nike. Lewandowski’s group, which has its own nutritionist and physiotherapist, is also more structured than Cheruiyot’s current training setup. Cheruiyot does have access to a physio in Nairobi, though that physio is not affiliated with Rongai.

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The training is different, too.

“The one thing that he said was different was doing two sessions in the same day,” Anderson said. “…He hadn’t done that in Nairobi as much, if at all.”

Looking ahead to the rest of 2025, Anderson said Cheruiyot will remain focused on the 1500, where he is targeting the Diamond League final in Zurich and World Championship final in Tokyo. But Anderson said Cheruiyot would also like to run at least one Grand Slam Track meet as a Challenger and plans to dip his toes in some longer distance races.

“We do want to look at doing the 3,000 and the 5,000 and I wouldn’t be surprised if you see him on the start line in a 5k at some point this season,” Anderson said. “That’s kind of a natural progression.”

Cheruiyot ran 7:36 for 5th at the 2023 Doha Diamond League in the only 3,000 of his career. His 5,000 pb is a modest 13:47, but he has only raced the event three times in his career — all at elevation in Kenya, and none since 2020.

Over the summer, Lewandowski’s group will likely split time between the Netherlands and altitude camps in locations such as St. Moritz. It remains to be seen whether Cheruiyot will join them, but he is certainly considering it.

“It’s just trying to do something different and this is the best time to do it,” Anderson said. “It’s at the end of an Olympic cycle. It’s at the beginning of a new year. And it’s also something that he’s not done before. So you have to change things up a bit. He’s recognized that. Personally, I think that’s a very good decision on his part, and I think he will really benefit from that opportunity to look at things that are different.”

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