Patrick Kipngeno is a Kenyan mountain runner from Bomet County who is the 2022 WMRA World Cup champion and won the 2021 World Mountain and Trail Running Uphill category. 

Kipngeno, who has four brothers and three sisters, started running in 2007 whilst in secondary school. A road runner at first, the Covid-19 pandemic saw him transition to mountain running. He said that the lack of road events, combined with an injury that made it hard to run on flat surfaces, made him make the change. 

Since then, Patrick Kipngeno has won several mountain running races, and at the age of 29 he became the 2022 WMRA World Cup champion and also won the Uphill Mountain category at the first World Mountain and Trail Running Championships in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Yet despite his extraordinary success in his debut mountain running season, he has said he still wants to return to competition on the road. 

A run2gether athlete, throughout his successful World Cup campaign he stayed and trained with teammates in in Kals am Großglockner, Austria. He said he has gained experience from talking with former World Cup winners, Geoffrey Ndungu and Joyce Muthoni Njeru. 

Patrick Kipngeno Record and Results 

Switching to mountain running during Covid, Patrick Kipngeno won his debut mountain race in 2020, bursting onto the scene in his home nation by winning the inaugural Kenyan Mountain Running Championships at Mount Longonot. He then followed that up in 2022 by winning the Mount Kenya Mountain Running Championships in its second edition. 

From there, he turned his attention to the WMRA World Cup. On his way to becoming the 2022 overall winner and classic sub-category winner, he won six of the seven events he participated in, taking first place in the Montemuro Vertical Run, Grossglockner Berglauf, Montée du Nid d’Aigle, Giir di Mont Uphill, Vertical Nasego and Trofeo Nasego. He came second at Sierre-Zinal. 

That same year, he also won the WMRA associated races Thyon-Dixence and Dolomitenmann. 

The delayed 2021 World Mountain and Trail Running World Championships then took place in November 2022 in Thailand, and Patrick Kipngeno participated in both the Uphill and Classic Up and Down mountain races. He won the former and came second in the latter.