Kipchoge, Ibarguen win IAAF awards
monaco — Kenyan marathon master Eliud Kipchoge and Colombian jumper Caterine Ibarguen won the IAAF men and women’s 2018 awards on Tuesday.
Kipchoge set a new marathon world record in Berlin in September, smashing the previous best by an incredible 78 seconds as he clocked 2hr 1min 39sec. The 34-year-old Olympic champion’s effort was the largest single improvement on the marathon world record since Derek Clayton improved the mark by 2:23 in 1967.
Acclaimed as the greatest marathon runner of the modern era, Kipchoge has dominated marathon racing since making his debut in Hamburg in 2013 after a successful track career that saw him win world gold and silver (2003, 2007) in the 5000m and Olympic silver and bronze (2008, 2004) over the same distance.
He has notched up 10 wins from the 11 marathons he has raced, winning three times not only in Berlin but also London, with victories in Rio for Olympic gold as well as in Hamburg, Rotterdam and Chicago. “This award means a lot to me,” said Kipchoge, crediting his children as being his “ignition key”.
“It’s a tribute to the hard work that I’ve put in during my career.”
Kipchoge came agonisingly close to sporting immortality by nearly running the first sub two-hour marathon last year. He missed the mythical mark by just 25 seconds. But the race conditions at the Nikesponsored event were so favourable — Kipchoge ran behind a sixman pacesetting team and was trailed by a time-keeping vehicle on a racing circuit in Monza, Italy — that the time was not recognised by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF).
“Going under two hours is just 25 seconds away,” said Kipchoge in Monaco. Ibarguen, also 34, won both horizontal jumps at the Central American and Caribbean Games.