Nicholas Bett

Nicholas Kiplagat Bett (27 January 1990 – 8 August 2018) was a Kenyan track and field athlete who competed in the 400 metres hurdles.

His personal best for the event is 47.79 seconds. He was a world champion in the event, having won in 2015 and a two-time bronze medallist at the African Championships in Athletics.

Career

His first outing at national level was in 2010, when he was a Kenyan junior finalist. He made his breakthrough nationally at senior level with a run of 50.39 seconds to place third at the Kenyan Athletics Championships in 2011. He missed most of the 2012 season but returned in 2013 with runner-up finishes at both the national championships and world trials. A new personal best of 49.70 seconds at the latter meet placed him near the top fifty globally for the season.

Another runner-up finish at the national level earned him selection for both the 2014 Commonwealth Games and the 2014 African Championships in Athletics. At the Commonwealth Games he failed to make the 400 m hurdles final and was also eliminated in the heats of the 4×400 m relay after Kenya were disqualified. At the African Championships in Athletics, he won a bronze medal in the 400 m hurdles, achieving a new personal best of 49.03 seconds, and a bronze medal in the 4 × 400 m relay with teammates Mark Mutai, Solomon Buoga and Boniface Mucheru.

Bett began to compete on the international track and field circuit in 2015 and had wins at the Savo Games and Lappeenranta Games in Finland. A personal best of 48.29 seconds at the 2015 Athletics Kenya World Championship Trials brought him selection for the national team and raised him to third on the global rankings.

Personal life

Bett's twin brother, Haron Koech, is also a 400 metres hurdler.

Bett died in a road accident near the town of Lessos, in Nandi County, Kenya, on 8 August 2018. He had arrived back from the 2018 African Championships in Athletics in Nigeria two days earlier, and was driving along the Kapsabet to Eldoret road on his way back to Nairobi.  According to the local police commander, Bett lost control of his car, an SUV, which then hit a bump in the road and landed in a ditch, killing the athlete on the spot.