Kemboi runs into trouble

Double Olympic champion and celebrated Kenyan steeplechase sensation Ezekiel Kemboi has refuted rumours that he clashed with a lady alleging to be his former girlfriend, last Saturday.

The gossip that featured in a section of the media on Wednesday elicited diverse reactions.

“I don’t know the lady of such name. I went straight to Eldoret on arrival from Doha Diamond League. I have instructed my lawyer to act on the matter. Those are just co-ladies who want to tarnish my name,” Grace Kerongo, a showbiz columnist with The Star quoted Kemboi as having said on Tuesday.

The vibe pits the runner against Terry Sawe, a 29-year-old lady who works with a leading telecommunication service provider who alleges that Kemboi and her had a verbal exchange on Saturday evening at the Sixeighty Hotel, where they had met shortly after Kemboi returned home from the Doha Diamond League outing.

“I don’t know her (Terry Sawe),” Kemboi told our Eldoret office reporter when we reached for a comment.

He did not agree to give us any more comment only saying his lawyer would take up the matter.

According to Terry, it all happened on Saturday afternoon. As the clock ticked 6pm, Terry, who claims to be the Olympics 3,000 steeplechase champion’s ‘secret girlfriend’ arrived at the Sixeighty Hotel.

She says that she took a seat at the cafeteria near the hotel entrance and ordered for her favourite beverage as she counted the minutes before her date, the celebrated athlete arrived. She was in an anxious mood.

According to Terry, earlier in the day, upon landing from Doha, Kemboi had called her and asked to meet her that evening.

Claiming that they have been dating secretly since 2009 before getting a son together in October 2011, Terry told Pulse that she did not see anything wrong with going to meet Kemboi.

“He arrived shortly after 7pm and after I congratulated him for winning the Doha outing, he suggested that we go to a more enclosed place for a chat and that is how we moved to the bar on the first floor of the building,” Terry claimed.

“He was unusually happy. We talked about our son and then he said he wanted to give me whatever I wanted in life as long as I met one demand,” she went on.

“What demand?” I asked.

“That I give him another baby, baby number two.”

 According to Terry, Kemboi, who is already a married man is well known to her family and had already offered to have her as his second wife, an idea she squashed saying she didn’t believe in polygamy.

She claims it was after this when she went to court to push Kemboi to commit to paying child support care among other responsibilities, a matter that was expected in court this month.

However, according to Terry, her parents begged her to settle the matter out of court ‘for the sake of peace’.

Pulse has since confirmed the file number on the said case; now expect to be heard this month.

Our efforts to get Kemboi respond to these assertions were futile as his phone went unanswered when we tried to reach him. Sources from his Eldoret base told Pulse that he had travelled to Nairobi on appointment at the US embassy and was due for camp training in Nairobi.

However, sources from Sixeighty confirmed the Saturday incidence took place.

“Back then when we started out, he told me he was a celebrity and that we should keep the relationship a secret otherwise people would spoil it. He started taking me for leisure holidays and that is when I learned how big he was from the way people treated him.

On this particular day, he promised to buy me a Toyota Premio and just before he showed up at my place, his wife arrived before him and started throwing insults at me asking me to leave her man alone,” she recalls, adding that this is when their relationship started going south.

But it was this reunion Saturday that turned it all murky.

“He wasn’t happy when I told him that I wasn’t ready for baby number two and that is when he grabbed my bag and phone and started an argument.

“It got heated and in the process, I stood up to leave after which he grabbed me. I was irked and held up to his shirt pocket where his passport was. I tore it as I was trying to escape,” she claims.

During the interview, Terry produced a receipt from Sixeighty Hotel with Kemboi Chemboi’s name whose details indicated that a room had been booked for two, at the hotel, that night.

A call by Pulse to the Sixeighty Hotel on Wednesday clarified that one Kemboi Chemboi had done a booking under the receipt whose copy is under our possession.

“Yes, it is in our records that one Kemboi Chemboi made a booking on Saturday and he was supposed to leave the hotel on Sunday. According to our records, the client was in our hotel until Sunday,” Alex Kimani, who works in the hotel’s booking department told Pulse. Kemboi’s full name is Ezekiel Kemboi Cheboi.

Asked if he could identify the client as Kemboi the athlete, he said he could not confirm.

He also said he had no knowledge of the said scuffle adding that only the security department could clarify that.

“The booking was made for two adults according to the information we have,” Alex noted.

“I tried to call the security guards and rushed downstairs to escape. He started quarrelling me in Kalenjin and immediately asked the service men to get his bags from the room,” claimed Terry.