“THE TRANSFER OF THE CENTURY” — Coach Patrick Sang officially announced the handover of track athlete Faith Kipyegon to legendary coach Brother Colm O’Connell, opening a new chapter in her pursuit of the Marathon dream. At the announcement event, Patrick Sang held Faith tightly for the last time. His voice trembled as he uttered a sentence that brought the entire hall to tears.
The Ngong Hills were still wrapped in morning mist on 12 November 2025 when the small conference room at the High Altitude Training Centre in Iten fell completely silent. More than a hundred journalists, athletes and former champions had come expecting another routine press briefing. Instead, they witnessed history.
Faith Kipyegon, double Olympic champion at 1500 m, world record holder, and the most dominant middle-distance runner of her generation, stood between two men who had shaped Kenyan athletics for half a century combined. On her right, Patrick Sang, the coach who had guided her from a shy 17-year-old to global icon. On her left, Brother Colm O’Connell, the Irish missionary who discovered David Rudisha and built St Patrick’s High School into a factory of dreams.
Patrick Sang spoke first. His voice, usually calm and measured, cracked almost immediately. “For fourteen years,” he began, “Faith has been more than an athlete to me. She has been family.” He paused, searching for words that would not betray the weight of the moment.
He recalled the day in 2011 when a skinny girl from Rosterman arrived at his training camp carrying nothing but a plastic bag with spikes and a letter from her secondary-school teacher. Sang remembered thinking she was too small, too quiet, too fragile for the brutal world of professional running.
He was wrong. Within two years she was junior world champion. Within five, Olympic champion. Within ten, untouchable. Yet for the past eighteen months, Faith had repeatedly asked the same question after long runs: “Coach, when do we start preparing for the marathon?”
Sang had always deflected. The 1500 m was her kingdom; the marathon was a different country, one that swallowed even the greatest track athletes. But Faith kept insisting. She wanted the challenge. She wanted 42.195 kilometres. She wanted to see how far her talent could stretch.
That is when Sang made the hardest phone call of his career. He dialled Brother Colm O’Connell. The 76-year-old answered on the second ring, as he always does. Sang did not waste words. “Brother,” he said, “I have someone who needs your wings now. Mine are no longer enough.”
Brother Colm understood immediately. He had watched Faith race since she was a teenager. He had seen the same fire he once saw in Rudisha, in Vivian Cheruiyot, in Wilson Kipketer. He also knew the marathon demanded something different: patience, endurance of the soul, the ability to suffer in silence for hours. He had spent fifty years teaching exactly that.
The agreement was sealed with a handshake and a cup of tea, the Kenyan way. No agents, no contracts, no publicity stunts. Just two coaches deciding what was best for a girl they both loved like a daughter.
Back in the conference room, Sang turned to Faith. He placed both hands on her shoulders, the same way he had done before every major final. Cameras clicked furiously. Then he pulled her into an embrace that lasted longer than anyone expected.
When he finally let go, his eyes were wet. He leaned close to her ear so only she could hear, yet somehow the microphone caught every word “Go one more lap, but this time… run with your own wings.”
The room dissolved. Athletes who had run sub-3:30 marathons sobbed openly. Journalists forgot to take notes. Even the normally stoic Brother Colm looked away, wiping his glasses.
Faith tried to speak but could not. She simply nodded, pressed her forehead against Sang’s chest one last time, then turned and walked across the small stage to Brother Colm. The old Irishman opened his arms, and she stepped into them as naturally as if she had always belonged there.
Later, when the emotions had settled, Brother Colm addressed the media with his usual gentle authority. “Faith is not leaving Patrick,” he said. “She is graduating. Patrick gave her speed and confidence. I will try to teach her distance and wisdom. Between us, perhaps we give Kenya its first female marathon world record holder who began life as a 1500 m queen.”
He revealed that the transition would be gradual. Faith will defend her Olympic 1500 m title in Los Angeles 2028, but from January 2026 she will train full-time at St Patrick’s under Colm’s programme, with Sang remaining as advisor and “emergency father figure”.
The plan is ambitious: debut marathon in 2027, target the 2028 Olympic marathon in L.A., then hunt Eliud Kipchoge’s world record in 2029 or 2030. Brother Colm smiled when asked if it was realistic. “I have seen children arrive here barefoot and leave as world champions. With Faith, we are not starting from zero. We are starting from perfection.”
Patrick Sang did not speak again that morning. He simply stood at the back of the room, arms folded, watching the athlete he had raised take her first steps into a new life. Those who know him say he has never looked prouder — or more heartbroken.
In Iten they are already calling it “The Transfer of the Century”. Not because a sponsor paid millions, but because two of the greatest coaches in history agreed that the future of Kenyan running mattered more than their own legacies.
And somewhere on the red dirt roads above the Rift Valley, Faith Kipyegon is running a little farther than yesterday, carrying the words of the man who first believed in her, feeling for the first time the wind beneath wings that are finally, truly her own.
