Kipchoge: Beating two-hour marathon barrier remains my greatest feat
By Pablo Moraga
Kaptagat, Kenya, Jun 23 (EFE).- Eliud Kipchoge — widely regarded as the greatest marathon runner of all time — has forgone a life of luxury and instead lives in a humble home that is also a training center in western Kenya.
Kipchoge shows EFE around the premises that only recently got powered by solar panels, backed by the center’s sponsors, and where dozens of runners live and train together.
The Kenyan has broken the marathon world record twice. He has won two consecutive Olympic marathons and is the only human to have run that distance (42,195 kilometers) in less than two hours.
To achieve this last feat in 2019, Kipchoge ran under conditions that World Athletics does not allow in official competitions and were engineered to push him beyond the two-hour barrier. But the marathon runner assures that, even so, that is the feat he remains most proud of.
Question: Do you think we are close to seeing someone run an official marathon in under two hours?
Answer: I think it is possible. I think in the future some runners will get it.
Q: Would you like to try it?
A: I don’t know… I think I have shown them the way (…) The world is actually open now as we tell people that there are no limitations at all.
Q: And what other goals do you have? You only have the Boston and New York Great Marathons to complete. Would you like to participate in them before the 2024 Olympic Games?
A: I have those races on my wish lists. (…) But the Olympic Games are actually important for me. I will be putting my effort into the Olympics and maybe putting a pause on some other things. It will make me happy, actually, to win the three Olympic marathons back to back. And 2024 is an important year for me.
Q: You have said that your first races were aimed at going to school.
A: The school is not far away, it’s about four or five kilometers and the life in Kenya during those days was you go to school in the morning, come back for lunch, back again, and come back again in the evening. To make sure you were not late you had to run.
Q: Was it then that you discovered that you wanted to dedicate your life to athletics?
A: It came from competing in school where normally I would win the school races. And after that you asked yourself well ‘Let me try.’
Q: You could live in a mansion anywhere in the world but have chosen to live a simple life in this training center. Why?
A: I trust and believe that being grounded is the way to train well, it’s the way to make sure you are not off the course, it’s the way to enjoy life, it’s the way to stay with people, and it’s the way to make yourself think and focus right.
Q: When you received the Princess Asturias award 2023, you said that a world of runners was a more peaceful, happier and healthier world. Can you explain what you meant?
A: Running will help us to be united, making us equally together, making us to enjoy life in this world. And it’s outside sport and when people outside sport recognise you it means that you have inspired the world.
Q: What people have inspired you?
