“I was standing on a chair – my children thought their mummy had gone mad,” Denise Akii-Bua Harris, daughter of the original gold medallist, told the BBC World Service about watching Kiprotich’s victory.
“I was screaming, I was celebrating, I had our flag up, tears were running down my face; I was just so happy and proud at that moment.”
Her father, she said, would have been “super-proud” of Kiprotich.
“It was a long time coming but it was worth the wait. This gold means so much for Uganda,” she added.
From now on, she said, Ugandans could say they were from the country that produced Kiprotich.
It is something to tell outsiders, who would otherwise associate it with famine, poverty, corruption and disease.
“Kiprotich’s 1st Olympic gold for Uganda in 40 years taught us that nations never die,” wrote Nairobi journalist Charles Onyango-Obbo on Twitter, external. “They fall into coma or hibernate.”
And Uganda is awake again.
