“The body is coming,” Wanjiru said.
He was the reigning Olympic champion. Hard as it was to believe in a country of great distance runners, Wanjiru was the only man from Kenya to have won a gold medal in the marathon. He was one of the favorites to win again next year at the London Games.
And then came the horrific news Sunday night. At 24, Wanjiru was dead. Reports from the Kenyan police were conflicting. Both involved a troubled marriage. One police report said he jumped from a balcony after his wife came home and found him with another woman.
“The fact of the matter is that Wanjiru committed suicide,” Eric Kiraithe, a national police spokesman, told The Associated Press.
A police official from Nyahururu, Wanjiru’s hometown, in the Rift Valley north of Nairobi, offered an account different from The A.P.’s. Wanjiru came home Sunday about 11:30 p.m. with a woman, his wife arrived soon after and an argument broke out, Jasper Ombati, the police chief of the area where Wanjiru lived, told The A.P.
“They got into an argument,” Ombati said. “His wife locked them in the bedroom and ran off. He then jumped from the bedroom balcony. He is not here to tell us what he was thinking when he jumped. We do not suspect foul play. In our estimation, he wanted to stop his wife from leaving the compound.”
Reached in Italy on Monday morning, Federico Rosa, Wanjiru’s agent, said he, too, could not believe that Wanjiru had killed himself.
“I am 100 percent sure there was no suicide,” Rosa said. “That’s completely out of the question.”
In any case, Wanjiru’s life had grown complicated since he won the Chicago Marathon last fall. In late December, he was charged with threatening his wife and a maid with an illegally obtained AK-47. He was also charged with hitting a security guard at his estate with the butt of the firearm.
According to The Daily Nation newspaper of Kenya, an angry Wanjiru broke windows in his house using the muzzle of the rifle early in the morning on Dec. 29 and threatened to kill his wife, Triza Njeri. A security guard said he saw Wanjiru emerge from the house with an unidentified woman, the paper reported.
Wanjiru denied the charges, saying he was framed, and was released from jail on bail. Assault charges were dropped in March, when his wife and the security guard reconsidered, The Daily Nation reported. But Wanjiru still faced the charge of illegal possession of a firearm. The case was scheduled to begin May 23.
Wanjiru had been twice attacked at his home by bandits, probably because of his wealth earned from running, and might have felt he needed a firearm for protection, Rosa, his agent, said.
Wanjiru was not divorced and was still living with his wife, Rosa said, but the marriage “was not going well.”
Rosa added: “I never understand clear the story. He wasn’t involved with his wife. She wasn’t happy.”
In recent weeks, Wanjiru had been training in Eldoret, Kenya’s running capital, and planned to run the San Diego Marathon next month, Rosa said. The agent said that he had spoken to Wanjiru on Saturday, and that the runner was planning to travel home to pay some bills and meet with his lawyer Monday regarding the firearm case.
“There was no depression,” Rosa said. “We got him out of this environment. He was happy and focused and relaxed.”
Runners from around the world, and the International Olympic Committee, offered their condolences Monday. Gebrselassie, who holds the marathon world record at 2 hours 3 minutes 59 seconds, said on his Twitter account that he was “totally shocked” by the news.
“Of course one wonders if we as an athletics family could have avoided this tragedy,” Gebrselassie wrote.
At the 2008 Beijing Games, Wanjiru set an Olympic record in winning the marathon in 2:06:32 on a blistering day that reached 86 degrees. Given the brutal conditions, many considered it the greatest marathon ever run, even though it was not a world record.
By winning in Chicago last fall at 23, Wanjiru became the youngest man to win four major marathons: the Olympics, Chicago in 2009 and 2010, and London in 2009. It would be his last marathon, but it showed Wanjiru at his determined best as he made a remarkable surge in the final half-mile to fend off Tsegaye Kebede of Ethiopia.
“He had the special gift of the champion,” Rosa said. “Besides a big talent, champions have what I could call an arrogance. They know they are stronger than the others. He was so focused on winning, not to be famous or get a lot of money, but just to show that he was the best.”
Legal problems disrupted Wanjiru’s training, however, Rosa said. He developed a hamstring injury in the spring and withdrew from the London Marathon. As a comeback, he was planning to run in Chicago or New York in the fall as he prepared for the London Olympics in the summer of 2012, Rosa said.
“He wanted to show the world who is Sammy Wanjiru,” Rosa said.
Mary Wittenberg, director of the New York City Marathon, said in a statement: “It is with shock and great sadness that we mourn the loss of one of our sport’s greatest and brightest stars. Sammy was a megastar in a sport where it’s hard to rise above the deep and broad talent.
“Sammy’s talent was undeniable, combined with a huge heart, drive and a fearless nature. He flew through heat and humidity in Beijing like they were inch-high hurdles.”
