NAIROBI, Oct. 22 -- In every sport, champions have unique characters and will always defy the odds to find a way to win.
World and Olympic steeplechase champion Conselsus Kipruto exhibited such desire to challenge his mind and body and overcome his fears to retain his title at the just concluded World Championships at a time many had worried about who will step forward to secure Kenya's most treasured track competition.
Everyone had ruled him out, and rightly so because Kipruto, the steeplechase god, was in despair five months into the biggest competition of the season, the World Championships.
The 24-year-old prodigy was nursing a stress fracture in the talus bone that left him with a painful foot. Due to its location and lack of blood flow, it's an injury that is usually slow to heal.
Doctors had demanded full rest for the foot to heal, he had to endure two-and-a-half months off running.
His world was crashing, fear was eating him up but deep down, he held onto hope that somehow, he would be fit to secure Kenya's pride and extend the tradition of winning every gold medal in the last two decades in the steeplechase.
"I had a lot of stress, a lot of worries. What am I going to do until I make it to Worlds? What will I do when I'm in recovery?", said Kipruto.
The injury had laid Kipruto low for the entire season.
Success was not guaranteed. He almost had similar problems a year before but recovered late to win the IAAF Diamond League final in Zurich, snatching victory from what seemed inevitable defeat.
That night Kipruto beat Soufiane El Bakkali despite losing a shoe on the first lap, twice conceding a break to his opponent, losing ground at the final water-jump and trailing off the final hurdle.
But that was 2018, he faced a severe challenge in 2019. He had to come up with a solution.
It was down to innovation. He built a pool in his back yard, a five meters long, two meters wide, and wedged into a small space at the back of his residence, filled with water.
His training partners lent a hand, all of them keen to see Kipruto arrive in Doha ready to defend his title. Those close to him watched the project unfold and thought he was crazy, but Kipruto never lost sight of the goal.
"I said, 'let me build this pool, let me do (underwater) running and that can make my legs feel strong when I start training. It will not be like beginning'. I put all my effort for the day into the pool," he said, "When I put it all together, I was doing like five hours a day."
In June, he got the all-clear to run on dry land and swiftly felt the payoff. "I texted my manager Michel Boeting when I did the first runs and told him, 'that swimming pool helped me a lot'."
As he began to rebuild his mileage, the only race he had to concern himself with was the one against the clock.
The Paris Diamond League meeting in late August was circled for his comeback, and in training, Kipruto focused primarily on endurance. That race gave him a harsh lesson in the distance he needed to bridge, Kipruto coming home fifth in 8:13.75 as Soufiane El Bakkali took victory in 8:06.64.
Two days later he tried again at the African Games in Rabat, but with his legs yet to recover from Paris he ended up stepping off the track.
"When I ran in Paris I said to my coach, 'I don't have the power'. He told me to relax, that I had to cancel the last Diamond League and I said, 'coach, I have to do it'."
Kipruto wanted one more shot on the world best to know where he stood, but in Brussels he again found himself fading out of contention on the final lap, finishing seventh in 8:14.54 with Getnet Wale winning in 8:06.92.
He had eight seconds to find on the world's best, and just four weeks to find them. Kipruto returned to Kenya a little despondent but it was then that his coach, Japter Keter, changed the focus of his training.
"We did speed work like four times a week for two weeks," says Kipruto, who soon felt the old pop return to his legs. "After those two weeks he wished me good luck and said, 'Conseslus, you're going to win the title'."
The pressure was mounting on who was to replace Kipruto and salvage Kenya's pride in Doha.
"After the injuries, people started to say [Kenya] had to depend on [Benjamin] Kigen or other young Kenyans. For me, I didn't want to put myself in that pressure. I told people, I'm not going to bring that pressure because if you do that you're going to lose your mind."
His solution? "I keep training - that's how to handle things." Despite all that - or, perversely, could it be because of all that - Kipruto somehow got himself to the starting line. Nobody saw that coming. During the finals in Doha, Kipruto was up against Ethiopians and Moroccan El Bakkali.
The Ethiopians teamed up to keep the pace more than honest, Chala Beyo taking out the first two laps before Wale took over.
Their teenage teammate Lamecha Girma led through 2000m in 5:22.95, and at that point Kipruto was sitting in, trying his best to focus on the task as he heard his name roared countless times from the hordes of Kenyans in the stands.
"It was an amazing crowd," he says. "I was like, I'm in a competition, I should focus on this. But that made me fight, especially in the last 50 meters. I planned to jump the last barrier with Wale but I made some mistakes," Kipruto says.
"I was a couple of meters [behind] so I thought I was going to lose it. I didn't want to be a former world champion so I had a great and strong mentality in my head and in my heart. I said I want to take the victory."
What unfolded was the most thrilling - and closest - finish of the championships, Kipruto reeling in Lamecha Girma with every stride and the pair crossing it virtually in unison. Then there was a pause, the most painful 28 seconds of his life, as he waited for the verdict.
"I was praying: let it be me," Kipruto recalled. "Let the first name be Conseslus."
A huge cheer erupted when the screen delivered the news. Kipruto: 8:01.35. Girma: 8:01.36.
In his all-conquering career, there had been wins of sheer dominance: his Olympic title in 2016, his first world title in 2017.
There had been wins despite wretched luck: his 2018 Diamond League final win in Zurich, where he had run down El Bakkali to win by 0.04 seconds despite losing a shoe early in the race.
Never had he won, however, amid such outrageous odds. Three months earlier he couldn't walk, but there he was, back on top, running and jumping and sprinting his way into the annals of the all-time steeplechasing greats.
A journey that began underwater had finished on top of the world.