Kipchoge’s absolute
dominance of 26.2
1 Bronze
2004
Athens
Olympics
Men’s
5,000
metres1 Silver
2008
Beijing
Olympics
Men’s
5,000
metres1 Gold
2016 Rio
de Janeiro
Olympics
Men’s
MarathonTHE
MEDAL
CASE2:01:39
The world record time set by Eliud Kipchoge at the 2018 Berlin
Marathon. Amos Kipruto was second, almost five minutes later10 wins
out of 11
marathon
starts
Miles Kipchoge ran during
the 2015 Berlin Marathon
with both insoles hanging
out of his shoes, causing
blisters and bleeding. He
still won, in 2:04:00.Fastest recorded
marathon time
in history, run
by Kipchoge for Nike’s Breaking2 project at
the Monza race track, in Italy, in May 2017,
with rotating pacesetters and a pace car.2:00:25
20
His weekly
training
volume when
he’s preparing
for a race115
MILES
Time taken off the previous
world record by his Berlin
2018 win, set by Dennis
Kimetto in Berlin 20141:18
Kipchoge is a spectacle. The man who brushed the two-
hour barrier, the greatest marathoner of all time. And he
smiles when he runs. The sun is just an average star in
cosmic terms and 34-year-old Kipchoge, the 2016 Olympic
gold medallist, is as humble – he will tell anyone who asks
that he is just another man on a run.
Watching Kipchoge run a marathon is one of the greatest
pleasures that sport can offer. It’s worth braving the perils
of live streaming, slogging through the cranky clickbait of
YouTube, anything to see him run.
He broke – no, smashed – the world record in 2018, running
2:01:39 in Berlin. He finished his first half marathon in under
an hour, the third-fastest debut ever. A year later, he won his
first marathon at Hamburg, beating the field by more than
two minutes and setting a course record. In Berlin later that
year, his first major, he finished second, behind former world
record holder Wilson Kipsang. Kipchoge, running in only
his second marathon, posted the fifth-fastest time in history.
Since then, he has won every marathon he’s run on the world
stage, including the gold medal at the Rio Olympics. Nine
in a row, including Berlin three times and London twice.
In 2017, as part of Nike’s Breaking2 project, an attempt to
record the first sub-two-hour marathon, Kipchoge ran the
fastest 26.2 time ever recorded (2:00:25) on the Formula One
track in Monza, Italy.
Better still, Kipchoge is a gent. He doesn’t taunt his rivals
or belittle his competition. His social media presence is
humble. In April last year, before the start of the London
Marathon, he tweeted, ‘Running a very beautiful race is
what I have on my mind.’ He won. And beautifully, too. He
is married, the father of three children, and lives a spartan
life. He maintains an elite training camp in Kenya, near the
Rift Valley, where he trains with scores of young Kenyan
runners, whom he houses and feeds. In between running,
he works on the farm, and collects and chops vegetables. ‘In
life, the idea is to be happy,’ he says. ‘So I believe in a calm,
simple and low-profile life. You live simple, you train hard
and live an honest life. Then you are free.’
Character matters. It’s arguably the foundation of what
makes athletes important. But numbers, times and records are
also essential. You have to have the numbers, and Kipchoge
obliges by winning, consistently. His competitive record
ref lects the steadiness with which he runs a race; absent are
low spots, surprise or miscalculation. This is his time and
it’s a great thing to witness. You don’t have to forget other
sports icons. You just have to know Kipchoge is out there,
climbing the skies above.Watching Eliud Kipchoge run a
marathon is like watching the
sun rise. Not sunrise, that cheap
tangerine moment when the sun
first cracks the horizon. But the
sun, rising. The inexorable
progress of a blinding disc of
light, climbing becalmed and
majestic in relentless passage
across the hours of a morning.
BIG LOVE
MAY 2019 RUNNERSWORLD.COM/UK 041W
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