The Iten killings: Deaths of elite athletes cast spotlight on domestic violence

Agnes' Tirop's sisters, Eve Tirop, 21, (from left) Damaris Tirop, 19, and Agnes' best friend, Monica Maiyo, 23, go for their dawn training run on June 24 in Iten, Kenya.

By Faith Karimi, CNN

Updated 0900 GMT (1700 HKT) August 25, 2023

This story is part of As Equals, CNN's ongoing series on gender inequality. Find out more about it here.

Iten, Kenya (CNN)Martin Tirop pumps his fists in the air as Faith Kipyegon wins her third 1,500-meter gold medal at the World Athletics Championships on Tuesday in Budapest. It is a bittersweet moment for him as Kipyegon invariably reminds him of his slain sister, Agnes.

 Agnes Tirop ran with the superstar in their junior years, when both women were scraggly teens making their mark in Kenyan competitive circles, he tells CNN. «Watching her run and win is like watching my sister. I go through a mixture of feelings: pride, sadness… I wish Agnes was still here, she'd be in Budapest too, competing.» Instead, on October 13, 2021, Martin Tirop made a gruesome discovery inside his sister's three-bedroom bungalow in Kenya's capital of distance running. Agnes had just returned from a race in Switzerland, but Martin says he couldn't reach her for days. After alerting the police, he tells CNN that he went to her house and peeked through a window to see her body slumped in a pool of blood near her bedroom door. She had stab wounds in her neck and was wearing her Adidas sports bra and shorts. Martin believes she was probably headed out for a run when she was attacked. Read MoreIn the world of elite running, Agnes had been a rising star. She brokethe women's 10km record in Germany in September 2021, about a month after placing fourth in the 5,000 meters at the Tokyo Olympics. She lived and trained in