MPossibly Eliud Kipchoge was overconfident in his dominance of the marathon. On Monday, Patriots’ Day, the dominating long-distance runner of the past decade tackled his first Boston marathon with such majesty as if he could ignore the cold and rain on this hilly course of all places.
Practically from the first meter, the 38-year-old two-time Olympic champion took the lead and set a pace as if he wanted to beat the course record of 2:03:02 set by his Kenyan compatriot Geoffrey Mutai in 2011, supported by a sustained tailwind.
Eleven-strong lead group
He was thirty seconds faster – against the wind – than Mutai at the time over the first five slightly downhill kilometers with a difference in altitude of 60 meters (14:17 minutes). In 62:19 minutes he led the leading group of eleven top athletes, who were followed by around 30,000 hobby runners, over the half marathon distance.
That too was unbelievably fast, only 21 seconds above the reference time for the course record. On the flat course in Berlin, he was significantly faster in his world record a good six months ago. Supported by three pacemakers, he went through at 59:50 minutes.
What should go wrong? Of the top six marathon results of all time, Kipchoge has run four. He broke his own world record last September and improved it to 2:01:09 hours. Since 2019, he has been the first and only person in the world to run the 42.195-kilometer route in less than two hours: in 1:59:40 hours – in a non-officially recognized run in Vienna’s Prater.
Winner: Evans Chebet from Kenya
:
Image: Reuters
And yet everything went wrong. When at kilometer 30 – Kipchoge had reduced the leading group to seven – Gabriel Geay from Tanzania (best time 2:03:00) attacked, only four runners could follow him. Kipchoge was not one of them. Only in the last kilometer did last year’s winner Evans Chebet win the race in 2:05:54 hours, ahead of Geay (2:06:04) and his training partner Benson Kipruto (2:06:06).
“Not the day to raise the bar”
The defeated Kipchoge finished sixth, 3:29 minutes behind the winner. He did not speak to reporters but later released a written statement. “I live for the moments when I push the limits. It’s never guaranteed, it’s never easy. Today was a tough day for me. I pushed myself as hard as I could, but sometimes we have to accept that today wasn’t the day to raise the bar.” “In sport you win and you lose, and there is always tomorrow for a new challenge. I look forward to what lies ahead.”
It sounds as if he is sticking to his goal of becoming Olympic champion in the marathon for the third time next year in Paris – no athlete has ever managed that. But the running experts at the letsrun.com website have already come to the conclusion: “We have a new king”.
The 33-year-old Chebet has now won back-to-back Boston 2022, New York 2022 and Boston 2023 away. On Monday he skilfully used Kipchoge’s supposed dominance up to 30 kilometers to save energy in the slipstream. With the high-flying self-confidence of the competition, he has his experience. Last fall, the Brazilian Daniel Do Nascimento took more than two minutes off him at the New York Marathon in humid heat, starting at a world record pace. Until he stopped, visited an outhouse and finally collapsed from exhaustion. Chebet won in 2:08:41 hours.
A decade dominating the marathon
Has Kipchoge caught up with his age? Quite a few people around him indicate that the master was born well before the date in his passport, and may therefore be forty years old or older. Twenty years ago, in Paris in 2003, he became world champion in the 5000 meters. For a decade he dominated the marathon. Has the ruler’s time run out? Or was he just tactical in Boston, risking a positive split where the first half of the marathon is run faster than the second?
Never underestimate a champion’s heart, especially Kipchoge’s fighting spirit. Since he lost the 2020 London Marathon, which was then postponed to autumn and to a small circuit, also in the rain and cold, he has won four times and improved the world record.
But in autumn at the marathons in Berlin, New York or the new one in Sydney, he will have to prove that he is still competitive at the very highest level – not just to the experts, not just to himself. But above all to the Kenyan federation, which runs his Olympic nominations is capable of undreamt-of hardships. The long climbs and frantic descents of Boston 2023 – for Kipchoge, a reminder of the ups and downs of an athletic career.