Eliud Kipchoge

Eliud Kipchoge was born November 5, 1984 in Kapsisiywa, in Nandi County, Kenya. He was raised by a single mother — a teacher — and only knew his father from photographs. He ran 3 kilometers to school every day, the way most Kenyan children in the highlands do. He met his coach Patrick Sang in 2001 at age 16, and Sang has been the only coach Kipchoge has ever had as a professional athlete.

At 18 he won the senior 5000m world title at the 2003 World Championships, beating Hicham El Guerrouj and Kenenisa Bekele in one of the great upsets of the era. He took 5000m bronze at the 2004 Athens Olympics and silver at Beijing 2008 before transitioning to the marathon distance in 2013. From there, the dominance was almost arithmetic: 15 marathon wins from 17 starts, including four London Marathons and five Berlin Marathons. He set the marathon world record at the 2018 Berlin Marathon with 2:01:39, lowered it again to 2:01:09 in Berlin 2022 at age 37, and won Olympic gold in Rio 2016 and again at Tokyo in 2021.

The Vienna run was its own kind of project. The INEOS 1:59 Challenge in October 2019 was a controlled course with 41 pacemakers, hydration delivered by bicycle, and weather and conditions optimized for the attempt. The conditions meant the time would not be ratified as a world record, but the historical significance of what Kipchoge had done was understood within minutes. He crossed the line in 1:59:40.2, hugged his wife Grace and his three children, and said: “I am the happiest man in the world to be the first human to run under two hours, and I can tell people that no human is limited.”

At Paris 2024, attempting an unprecedented third consecutive Olympic marathon gold at age 39, he dropped out at around 30 kilometers — the first DNF of his marathon career — citing back discomfort. He announced afterward that he would not run another Olympic marathon. He has since launched Eliud’s Running World, a project to run seven marathons across seven continents to raise money for libraries in Kenya. His coach still lives in Kaptagat, the same training camp where Kipchoge has trained for over twenty years. The discipline is not metaphorical. The Kaptagat training group runs at 6 a.m. in the rain. Kipchoge sweeps the floor of his own bunkhouse.