Conquering depression that pushed her to drinking after her former boyfriend allegedly swindled her out of close to Sh11 million between 2013 and 2019 warms the heart of long distance runner Joan Nancy Rotich.
It marked the first step to recovery for the Ngong-based athlete, who was also slapped with a doping ban in 2019. Though a slow process, Ms Rotich, who is struggling due to lack of finances, hopes that she will get justice when she finally recovers her money and property from her former boyfriend.
Ms Rotich, whose plight Nation Sports highlighted on February 5, 2025, said her former boyfriend was due for the court hearing last month at Ngong Law Court, Kajiado County but was involved in a road accident the night before and is hospitalised at Mbagathi Referral Hospital on Raila Odinga Way in Nairobi.
Ms Rotich has made remarkable strides and is one of 10 athletes (five women and five men) who graduated two months ago from Athletes Welfare Initiative - Kenya after months of training on financial literacy, anti-doping, and Gender-Based Violence in Ngong. Eleven athletes (six men and five women) also graduated on Thursday from the institution, and the third batch will join in a few weeks.
Athletes Welfare Initiative - Kenya is a community-based organisation that trains athletes in financial literacy, anti-doping and gender based violence. It was started early this year by Sofia Hjert, a former Swedish distance runner, jointly with seasoned runner and comedian Samson Nyamweya.
“How I wish I received this training way back when I started running. I was maybe blinded by love to trust someone with all my savings from race. I had not even started living with him,” Ms Rotich remembers. She is back in training in Ngong, and is hoping for a breakthrough, having served a four-year doping ban that came in 2019.
Nancy Joan Rotich with some of her trophies, which she has won in her career as an athlete since 2013 during the interview at her home in Ngong on January 31, 2025.
Photo credit: Francis Nderitu | Nation
“A simple painkiller bought across the counter worth Sh20 made me suffer for four years, adding to my pain as I fought to recover my property,” the athlete, who slumped into depression for lack of money for an air ticket to attend races outside the country and for paying rent, told Nation Sport on Friday. Her athletics career dates back to 2011 when she picked up running from her cousin, the legendary distance runner Paul Tergat.
Ms Rotich’s running career started in 2011 with her debut race, Venlo Venloop Half Marathon, where she finished fourth on March 27 in the Netherlands to her last race —Taiyuan International Marathon on September 8, 2019 in China. Two of her races in 2019 were nullified due to a doping case.
After competing in two half marathon races and three 10km road races on her debut season in 2011, Ms Rotich took up the full marathon, finishing eighth in the 2011 Standard Chartered Nairobi Marathon on October 30 in 2 hours, 41 minutes and 43 seconds. She swept to three marathon victories in 2012 winning, Salzburg Marathon (2:36:08) in Australia, Münster Marathon (2:38:13) in Germany and Metz Marathon (2:38:13) in France.
In 2013, she competed in four marathon races, finishing second at Münster and Linz Marathon but won Athens and Kisumu Safaricom Marathon, where she beat among others the 2020 Olympic marathon Peres Jepchirchir.
One of her best pay was when she won the Taipei Marathon in 2015 to pocket Sh2.6 million and 2017 Kuala Lumpur Standard Chartered Marathon where she settled fourth to pocket Sh750,000. “I have pocketed over 7 million from all these races but I have nothing to show after my boyfriend took everything,” she said in an earlier interview.
Ms Rotich, who embraced athletics in 2011 after completing her secondary school education at Talai High School Baringo, said that one of her two managers, who is a Kenyan, also disappeared to Canada with purse money of close to Sh400,000.
Ms Rotich said her life was in danger after she opted to expose her boyfriend, who went missing after she demanded to know where some of the investments she had entrusted to him were. She reported the case at Ngong Police Station for protection besides compelling her boyfriend to return some of the assets he had purchased using proceeds from the races she participated aboard.
“I first met him in 2013 but we haven’t been living together. I gave him all the money I collected from races from 2013 to 2019,” Rotich says, adding that things degenerated to know the whereabouts of two tour vans the boyfriend had purchased using her savings. She has urged women in troubled relationships to seek timely help.
Ms Rotich claims that while abroad in 2015, she wired Sh2 million to her boyfriend to purchase a tour van and gave him an additional Sh650,000 in 2017 to cost-share in the purchase of another tour van.
“He then lured me to help him build a house that shall be ours when we settled down as a couple. I wired him close to a million…am not able to state how much but I have the records in addition to many other transactions,” says Ms Rotich, who regrets trusting her boyfriend blindly.
“He went quiet on me in 2020 when I demanded the logbooks to the cars besides being taken home to visit the house he had constructed using my money. That is when I realised all had gone down the drain,” explains Ms Rotich.
The Direct Commission Intelligence Officers (DCIOs) at Ngong confirmed that Ms Rotich had reported the case to them and launched investigations leading to the hearing of the case Athletics Kenya Gender officer head Elizabeth Keitany confirmed handling Ms Rotich’s case. “We had availed a lawyer for her but she went quiet. We are still available in case she needs assistance,” said Ms Keitany.
