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Even in darkness, Eliud Kipchoge finds the light. The two-time Olympic champion, considered by many to be the greatest marathoner of all time, has feared for the lives of his family since fellow Kenyan marathoner Kelvin Kiptum’s death in early February, he told BBC Sport Africa earlier this week.
Kiptum, the 24-year-old rising star who broke Kipchoge’s marathon world record at the Chicago Marathon in October, died in a car crash on February 11. His tragic passing fomented a campaign of online abuse directed at Kipchoge, wrongly accusing him of being connected to Kiptum’s death.
“I received a lot of bad things; that they will burn the (training) camp, they will burn my investments in town, they will burn my house, they will burn my family,” the 39-year-old Kipchoge told BBC Sport Africa in an emotional interview at his home in Eldoret, Kenya. “That was my worst news ever in my life.”
His first instinct was to make sure his family was safe. Fearing for his children biking to and from school, he started driving them instead. He called his mother, who told him to “take care.”
“Where I come from is a really local area. And with the age of my mum, I really realized that social media can go everywhere,” Kipchoge said in the interview. “But she gave me courage. It was really a tough month.”
In addition to losing sleep from worry for his family, Kipchoge estimates he lost 90 percent of his friends. Yet Kipchoge forged ahead in his own life, he told BBC Sports Africa: “I saw no meaning to change training venues because my life is open. Our sport is not training in the gym, it is going outside to run. I walk in the streets freely.”
He traveled to Japan for the Tokyo Marathon on March 2, where he didn’t sleep for three nights in the lead up to the race. He went out with the leaders but faded at the 12 mile mark, eventually dropping to 10th in 2:06:50—the worst placement at a World Marathon Major in his career.
But as always, he keeps moving forward.
“It’s about getting up and going straight again, to your goal,” he said in the interview.
Redefining What’s Possible
On May 1, less than 100 days before the Paris Olympic Games in August and well after most countries had finalized their athlete rosters, Athletics Kenya announced its marathon team. Kipchoge, of course, got the nod. Amid the extreme stress he’s been under, he has the unprecedented opportunity to win a third straight Olympic gold medal in the marathon.
When we caught up with Kipchoge at a “Nike On Air” event in Paris in April, one thing had not changed: his belief, both in himself and in the power of sport.
“I’m really happy to learn that what I’ve been doing has [had] a lot of impact in sport,” he said. “Not just the sport as a profession. I say, ‘no human is limited,’ meaning that you come out of your door, you run for an hour, you become healthier. I’m trying to tell every professional to push. Be the doctor, be the engineer, be the teacher, be the psychologist, be the psychiatrist, be the physiologist. Push yourself to something better. That’s the narrative I’m driving to the world. We move together as one and make this world a better place.”
It is perhaps this self-belief that sets him apart from the rest. His career has been defined by historic firsts many thought impossible: Kipchoge is the only person to ever run a marathon in under two hours (an unofficial record of 1:59:40 from an exhibition race in 2019), and his 2:01:09 at the Berlin Marathon in 2022 remains the second-fastest marathon time in history behind Kiptum’s 2:00:35 at last October’s Chicago Marathon. He won 10 consecutive marathons from 2014 to 2019 and broke the world record twice, in 2018 and 2022.
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Once again, he faces doubt from the outside. But some wonder if he’s past his prime. At 39, he’ll be the oldest Kenyan track and field Olympian ever and the first Kenyan in any sport to compete in five different Olympics. He also faces steep competition, even from his own countrymen. He’s joined on Team Kenya by Benson Kipruto, who won the Tokyo Marathon in March in 2:02:16 and has finished in the top three of his last seven marathons, including wins in Boston (2:09:51, 2021) and Chicago (2:04:24, 2022), and Alexander Mutiso, who won the London Marathon on April 21, 2024 in 2:04:01. The Kenyan team is so dominant that Evans Chebet, who won Boston and New York in 2022 and followed that up with another win in Boston in 2023, did not make the team.
Even before Tokyo, Kipchoge has shown chinks in his once impenetrable armor over the last year. In 2023, he finished sixth at the Boston Marathon in 2:09:23, his third loss in the marathon and the slowest marathon time of career. Not to mention, the Kenyan runner has struggled on hilly courses (like Boston), and the Paris course features two gnarly inclines that would slow down even the strongest runners.
But Kichoge is all eyes ahead. Regarding his training and focus on the marathon at the Paris Olympics, which will take place on August 10, Kipchoge said, “for the next three months I’ll be in training, putting all the effort, the whole mind, all the energy on the Olympic Games.” Kipchoge’s mental toughness is as legendary as physical fitness. “What made me stay [at the top] for a long time is self-discipline,” Kipchoge told Irish journalist Cathal Dennehy—so don’t count him out yet.
In fact, the GOAT, who won his first marathon 11 years ago, still has goals beyond the Olympics.
“After Paris—actually I need to win,” he said. “I need to win three times.”
Kipchoge has said that one of his key career goals is to become the first man in history to win all six of the World Marathon Majors. He’s won Berlin, Chicago, London, and Tokyo; only New York and Boston—arguably the two hardest courses—remain. “I’m working one by one,” Kipchoge said in response to whether that goal is still in play. “But number one on the bucket list now for the year 2024 is the Olympic Games in Paris.”
Abby Levene contributed to the reporting in this story.