William Tanui
Athletics competitor from Kenya
William Kiptarus Tanui (born 22 February 1964) is a Kenyan former athlete, winner of 800 m at the 1992 Summer Olympics.
Biography
Born in Terik Location of South Nandi District, William Tanui first came to notice relatively late in life, when he won the 1500 m at the Kenyan Commonwealth Games trials in 1989, but ran only sixth at the 1990 Commonwealth Games in Auckland, New Zealand. In the same year he won the 800 m at the African Championships in Cairo. In the World Indoor Championships at Seville in 1991, Tanui crossed the line first, but was disqualified for breaking from his lane too early. He won 800 metres in the 1991 All-Africa Games.
Tanui's greatest moment came at the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona. In the 800 m final he stormed down the outside, actually finishing in lane 3, to narrowly beat a fellow countryman Nixon Kiprotich for the gold medal. Tanui was unable to repeat this form in his only appearance at a World Championships, at Stuttgart in 1993, finishing seventh.
He finished 2nd at the IAAF World Cup 800 metres race in 1992 and 1994.
Tanui concentrated more on the 1500 m in the latter part of his career, and he finished fifth at that distance in the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “William Tanui” is athletics competitor from Kenya. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through William, Tanui and Athletics, not as a finished interpretation.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q451919. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1964, 1992, 1500 and 1989.
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This entry incorporates text from “William Tanui” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.