By Satish Sekar © Satish Sekar (October 5^th 2025)

A Star

Joan Chelimo Melli is a true champion on and off the track and she has a hugely important story to tell. Cardiff has a very special place in her heart, but the feelings are mixed. She won the Cardiff Half Marathon in 2014 – she was pregnant at the time, but she returned home to find out that her partner who had exploited her talent for his own ends dumped her.

It took her a while to recover both emotionally and to rebuild her career. She rebuilt her career on and off the track. She recently competed for Romania in the World Championships in Tokyo. Olympic athletes Rebecca Cheptegui and Agnes Tirop were her friends, especially Tirop. Their deaths at the hands of abusive partners and so-called coaches devastated her, but she fought back both for justice for her friends, but also for future generations.

The Long Fight

Chelimo has a difficult balancing act to perform. She established the campaigning organisation Tirop’s Angels. It isn’t just about trying to secure justice for Agnes Tirop’s memory, which is and will remain a hard slog now that the prime suspect and defendant at her murder trial Ibrahim Rotich has been allowed to jump bail. Rotich was arrested soon after Tirop’s brutal murder trying to leave Kenya. That rightly cost him his freedom pending his trial. Earlier this year, while on trial, Rotich was allowed to buy his freedom on bail. He failed to turn up to court – his lawyers claim they don’t know where he is. It seems obvious that he does not intend to risk completing his trial.

Chelimo want Tirop’s Law to be enacted in Kenya to protect the rights of victims like Agnes Tirop and Rebecca Cheptegui.[1] She also called for Kenya to appoint a Victims’ Commissioner to champion the rights of victims in Kenya. She also welcomed the commitment of the Veteran Athletes Association (VAA) to combat gender-based exploitation and gender-based violence.

She has emerged as a champion and hero in the fight against both, providing advice and assistance, especially to athletes. But she has a difficult balancing act between being an advocate to combat gender-based exploitation and violence and the demands of being an élite athlete.

Chelimo is targeting a medal – she hopes gold – at the Marathon in Los Angeles’ third Olympiad, which is scheduled to take place in 2028, almost 100 years after its first Olympiad. For further information on Joan’s aims, objectives and career, see my exclusive interview with her at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dd27E4GTXE).

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[1] This was inspired in part by failures by Britain’s Parole Board regarding the case of sexually-motivated murderer, Jeffrey Gafoor – Lynette White’s killer was released earlier this year after the Parole Board refused a public hearing and ensured that Gafoor was freed at sixth application without the innocent victims of his crime (the Cardiff Five, their families and the community of Butetown) ever being allowed to have their say. Lynette’s family and society had also been cheated of justice as the real killer was given a more lenient tariff – the minimum that had to be served before he could apply for release on parole – than two of the Cardiff Three received for the same crime.