Marathon man Kipchoge smashes the world record
Kenyan legend runs brilliant race in Berlin Compatriot Cherono wins women’s race
To the likes of Bob Beamon and Usain Bolt, we can now add Eliud Kipchoge – athletes whose feats are so unthinkable, so incomprehensible, that they are hard to fathom.
On a glorious Sunday morning in Berlin, the greatest marathon runner of all time became that bit greater.
Already the winner of his past eight marathons – including Olympic gold and three victories in London – the only thing to have eluded Kipchoge was Dennis Kimetto’s world record of 2hr 2min 57sec set in the German capital in 2014.
Kipchoge, 33, did not just beat it, he destroyed it. Shattered it. Put it so far out of reach it is difficult to envisage anyone surpassing it for years to come.
His incredible winning time of 2.01.39 was a full 78 seconds better than the previous mark – the first time the world record had been lowered by more than a minute in a race for 39 years and the single greatest improvement for 51 years.
Humans are not supposed to do this type of thing. But over the past few years, Kipchoge has made it clear he is not restricted by the body’s limitations imposed on the rest of the world.
Even for those considered the greatest in history, marathon world records are not broken without favourable conditions, and the weather in Berlin was near-perfect.
Pre-race talk focused on the battle between Kipchoge and Wilson Kipsang, but that head-to-head was over before it had even begun.
Kipchoge had already pulled clear at 5km and by the halfway stage the margin from first to second was already more than a minute. Kipchoge’s time at that point was 61.06 and he was running at such speed that two of the three pacemakers employed to help him on his world record quest had been forced to drop out.
Only one remained, but he could manage just 10 more minutes before also falling by the wayside – something that Kipchoge later shrugged off as “unfortunate”. That left him more than 10 miles to run solo, just one man against the clock.
Which is when the incredible happened: he sped up. Running as though the pacemakers had been holding him back, Kipchoge completed the second half of the race in a barely-conceivable 60.33. Still full of beans as he was roared through the Brandenburg Gate, the smile of his appeared and the celebrations were worthy of his astonishing achievement, punching the air while sprinting up and down beyond the finish line.
For context, his winning time was the equivalent of running every 100metres in 17.3sec, 800m in 2.18.39, or 5km in 14.24.91. Think of that next time you head out for a morning run.
“I lack the words to describe how I feel,” said Kipchoge. “I am so happy. It was really hard, but I was prepared to run my own race early, so I wasn’t surprised to be alone.
“I am just so incredibly happy to have finally run the world record as I never stopped having belief.”
A double Olympic and world medallist over 5,000 metres, it is over the marathon distance that Kipchoge has flourished in recent years. He has now broken 2hr 5min on eight occasions and last year came within 25 seconds of becoming the first man to go below two hours under controlled conditions as part of a Nike project.
With yesterday’s world record added to the unofficial time he ran in that Nike experiment, he joked that his next ambition requires him to run slower to complete an extraordinary set: “I have run 2.00, 2.01, 2.03, 2.04 and 2.05. The next season I want to run 2.02.”
Gladys Cherono made it a Kenyan double in Berlin, beating a strong women’s field to triumph in a course-record 2.18.11, but it will be Kipchoge’s performance that lives in the memory.
Evolution suggests athletic improvement should come in steady increments, but every now and then someone comes along who rewrites what was thought possible. Kipchoge is one of those people and yesterday was that moment.