A native of Kenya, Paul Chelimo is the most successful runner to wear the Blue & Gold, competing from 2011-14. He won seven Southern Conference individual championships, including three cross country, an indoor mile, an outdoor 1,500-meter race and a distance medley relay championship, and was the first Spartan runner to earn cross country All-America honors. He has a total of five All-America awards.
Chelimo won the 2011, 2012 and 2013 SoCon Cross Country Championships as an individual and the SoCon Runner of the Year awards those three years. He is one of only eight men’s cross country runners in conference history to win the individual championship more than two times.
Chelimo is a three-time All-SoCon cross country first-team selection and was named All-America for cross country in 2011 for placing 14th and 2012 for placing 10th at the NCAA Championships. He was runner-up at the NCAA Division I Southeast Regional twice.
He was the National Runner-Up twice in the 5,000-meter run at the NCAA Division I Outdoor Track & Field Championships, earning First Team All-America honors in 2012 and 2013. He won the 2012 and 2013 NCAA East Regional Championship in the 5,000-meter race.
According to UNCG records, he currently has the top marks in the indoor mile by 6.29 seconds and the 3,000-meter run by 18.8 seconds, as well as the outdoor 1,500-meter run and 5,000-meter run.
He was the 2013 SoCon Indoor Track & Field Champion in the 3,000-meter.
In addition to his athletic prowess in the Blue & Gold, Chelimo earned Academic All-SoCon honors on four occasions, and in 2013 he was voted CoSIDA Academic All-American second team.
Chelimo was named to the SoCon’s 100th Anniversary Cross Country Team in 2021. Most recently, Chelimo was inducted into the SoCon Hall of Fame in May and is just the second athlete from UNCG to earn the honor.
He turned pro in 2014, and after leaving UNCG, entered the U.S. Army’s World Class Athlete Program and earned U.S. citizenship, leading to becoming the first-ever U.S. Olympian in UNCG history. Chelimo went on to win the silver medal in the 5,000-meter run at the Rio de Janeiro Olympics in 2016. He followed that with a bronze medal at the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo in the 5,000-meter run.
Chelimo is still competing at a professional level and is currently training for the Valencia Marathon to take place this winter. He and his wife, Brenda, have one daughter, Ariana.
