İlham Tanui Özbilen
Kenyan-born Turkish middle-distance runner (born 1990)
İlham Tanui Özbilen (born William Biwott Tanui on 5 March 1990 in Kocholwo, Kenya) is a middle distance runner now representing Turkey. The 1.77 m (5.8 ft) tall athlete weighs 60 kg (130 lb). He is coached by Kenyan Patrick Sang.
Career in Kenya
Özbilen, then competing as William Biwott Tanui, won the 1500 metres at the 2009 World Athletics Final in Thessaloniki, Greece. He holds the current world junior record in the mile run with his clocking of 3:49.29 minutes, achieved in Oslo on 3 July 2009. He was also part of the Kenyan team (with Gideon Gathimba, Geoffrey Kipkoech Rono and Augustine Kiprono Choge) that set a new world record of 14:36.23 in the rarely contested 4 x 1500 metres relay at the 2009 Memorial Van Damme Golden League meeting in Brussels, Belgium.
Turkish citizenship
He switched allegiance to Turkey in June 2011, changing his name to İlham Tanui Özbilen. His surname was given him by his godfather and manager Önder Özbilen, who persuaded him in December 2010 in Kenya to immigrate to Turkey. He moved in February 2011 to Turkey, and was naturalized on 8 June 2011. While he would normally have been ineligible to internationally represent his adoptive country until 8 June 2013, it was announced in February 2012 that he had received permission from the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) to compete for Turkey starting with the 2012 World Indoor Championships in Istanbul.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “İlham Tanui Özbilen” as kenyan-born Turkish middle-distance runner (born 1990). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as kenyan-born Turkish middle-distance runner (born 1990). Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
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 Q166624. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1990, 1500, 2009 and 2011.
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This entry incorporates text from “İlham Tanui Özbilen” 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.