5.45am at the Kaptagat training camp arrived on February 11 in the same way it does every day — with Eliud Kipchoge going back to work.
The marathon legend will tell you every session is crucial, but there’s no doubt that day’s long run was especially so.
Tokyo was calling, days were flying by, and the running world that long-placed Kipchoge at its centre was suddenly shifting.
No one could possibly know that unspeakable tragedy was on the horizon, set to turn that shift into a seismic jolt — one that this weekend’s Olympic marathon brings back into sharp focus.
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Two years earlier, Kipchoge floated above the Tokyo streets en route to another legacy-building triumph. Now, those same streets carried the heft of a humbling 2023 for the Kenyan icon.
Few could’ve predicted his sudden slip.
To that point, watching Kipchoge was to have your breath taken away, as his times broke stunning barriers, leaving a mark that transcended the sport and made him a cultural icon.
Most remarkable, however, was how he made you feel.
Kipchoge’s personal mantra is ‘no human is limited’. Each of his snappy strides would echo that three-word message and, in watching their mesmerising grace and power, your world might’ve felt that bit bigger, too.
His feats had simply made him a running god amongst men.
Even so, nothing lasts forever — something which a deep-thinker like Kipchoge fully understood.
Nonetheless, as an athlete who was virtually invincible across a glorious decade, in which he achieved all that the marathon has to offer, the crown was hard to let go of.
But the shift was now a reality he was facing. 2023 brought promise of another world record, and a new crown in Boston, but only delivered pain.
Kipchoge, now 39, suffered just the third defeat of his marathon career in Boston where he posted his slowest-ever time of 2:09.23.
The most shocking blow, however, was still to come — and it would arrive without him stepping across a start line at all.
***
Born down the road from Kaptagat, 15 years after Kipchoge, was the man who would one day snatch his marathon crown, Kelvin Kiptum.
Ten centimetres taller, far younger, and hardened by his rogue training methods — you won’t find them in any marathon handbook — Kiptum was the real deal.
Kiptum came through the world ranks quietly, first racing at the half-marathon distance, in which he earnt a handful of respectable finishes, but no win, before exploding on his marathon debut in Valencia in December 2022.
His winning effort of 2:01:53 was, at the time, the fourth-fastest ever, and made him only the third person in history to break the two-hours-and-two-minutes barrier.
By the time of his first ever marathon major, London in April 2023, the BBC was asking in a profile piece ‘Can Kelvin Kiptum really be Kipchoge 2.0?’.
The world soon had its answer.
Kiptum proved he was no one-hit wonder by giving Kipchoge’s then world-record a shake with a 2:01:25.
Buoyed by the success, he only pushed harder from there, refining his reckless training methods with the help of coach Gervais Hakizimana.
Even with some tempering, his training numbers at the time will still make your eyes weep.
Kiptum’s most intense weeks would see him run 300km, including three double-session days in which he’d run 25-28km in the morning, and 12km in the afternoon.
While many athletes’ weekend long runs would be around 35km, Kiptum would run up to 40km at close to full race pace.
Rest days were simply non-existent.
Despite overseeing the training regime, Hakizimana did not fully support it.
“All he does is run, eat, sleep,” Hakizimana said. “He’s very strong. He does all the training properly. He’s in his best years. But, at some point, I’m afraid he’ll get injured.”
Still, no injury was in sight by the time of October’s Chicago Marathon, held two weeks after Kipchoge’s last race before Tokyo, a 2:02:42 win in Berlin.
What followed wouldn’t so much prove that Kiptum could match Kipchoge as much as it would signal him as the builder of a bigger and better dynasty.
Kiptum pounded the Chicago streets with startling ferocity until he broke the tape, and stopped the clock, at an earth-shattering 2:00:35.
He did so with enough comfort to wave and blow kisses at spectators before he crossed the finish line.
Top performance coach and author Steve Magness described the feat as “absolutely insane”, and one that marked a “new era in the marathon”.
Kiptum, meanwhile, said he said he saw it coming, even if the timing was a surprise.
“A world record was not in my mind today,” he said, adding: “I knew one day, one time I’d be a world-record holder.”
A sub-two-hour marathon in official race conditions — a marker forever thought to be beyond all fathomable human capability — was somehow in reach.
Meanwhile, for the first time since September 2018, Kipchoge was the second-quickest marathoner ever — and appeared to be only sliding further.
His legend status was, and still is, untouchable.
There is no forgetting how Kipchoge moved the needle well before Kiptum. He did so by winning all but one of the first 12 marathons he raced, claiming back-to-back Olympic titles in 2016 and 2021, and dropping the world record twice in Berlin with 2:01:39 in 2018, and 2:01:09 in 2022.
Kipchoge ran, so Kiptum could run even faster.
But by February, the pressure mounted on Kipchoge, who was not forthcoming with public congratulations towards Kiptum for his world record effort.
Tokyo was set to offer a clue on whether Kipchoge could take the fight to Kiptum in Paris months later, or if he truly was on the decline.
The marathon was now just weeks away and there was no ignoring that Kipchoge, knocking on the door of his forties, was suddenly standing face-to-face with a premature changing-of-the-guard moment.
And so, at 5.45am on February 11, Kipchoge had no choice but to get back to work.
He turned off his alarm, laced up his shoes and, in silence, bolted into the pre-dawn mist.
***
5.45am at the Kaptagat training camp arrived on February 12 in a way it never had before.
Hours earlier, Kiptum hopped into his Toyota Premio with Hakizimana, turned onto nearby Elgeyo Marakwet-Ravine road, and drove into the same Kaptagat darkness Kipchoge spent the morning running in.
Neither were seen alive again.
As the Paris Olympics nears its end with the blue-riband marathon event, Kiptum’s tragic loss still haunts the sporting world with so many questions unanswered, so much greatness unachieved.
Saturday at 4pm in front of the Hotel de Ville was set to be the first, and probably only, time Kipchoge and Kiptum would race-off in the same event.
Like Kobe Bryant vs Michael Jordan in the late 90s, or Kylian Mbappe vs Lionel Messi at the 2022 World Cup, it was to be immense box office that pitted young against old, greatness eternal vs greatness emerging.
Kipchoge and Kiptum would look at each other across the same start line before, for 42.195km, trying to run each other into oblivion.
Instead, the showdown of a lifetime will never be won, nor lost. Instead, its enormous potential just lingers in the ether, wrapped in sorrow and regret.
Kiptum was just 24.
A father of two, and already the quickest marathoner on the planet before even entering his true prime, the world was at his feet.
The Kenyan’s unimagineable loss is felt most keenly by his family, but there’s also suffering in the wider sporting world.
Outside of motorsport, it’s hard to think of a more sudden tragedy to strike down an athlete within their world-conquering era — though it does echo the loss of US running legend Steve Prefontaine, who also died at 24 in a car accident.
Saturday’s race will shine a light on the cavernous hole of talent and colossal potential that Kiptum’s death has left.
Whether Kipchoge is successful in becoming the first athlete to win three-consecutive Olympic marathons in Kiptum’s absence, his suffering will be hard to ignore, too.
Shockwaves from the death of Kiptum penetrated right through to the core of Kipchoge’s life, upending it in strange, and ugly, ways.
Bizarre rumours spread online that Kipchoge was somehow involved in his rival countryman’s premature demise.
The claims came without grace, sense, nor any actual founding whatsoever.
But that didn’t stop them from making the life of Kipchoge — who lives simply and, largely, reclusively — a living hell.
“I was shocked that people on social media platforms are saying ‘Eliud is involved in the death of this boy’,” an emotional Kipchoge told BBC Sport Africa in May. “That was the worst news ever in my life.”
Kipchoge received threats to his training camp, investments, his house and, worst of all, his family.
His children were forced to stop biking to school, while Kipchoge explained it was tough for them to hear that “your dad has killed somebody”.
But it was in thinking about his mother that Kipchoge was moved to tears.
“My worst moment was (when) I tried to call my mum,” he said. “Where I come from is a really local area. And with the age of my mum, I really realised that social media can go everywhere.”
With each passing day it became clearer that on February 12, Kipchoge had woken up to a different world.
An athlete who has always believed in the strength in numbers during training suddenly found his friends and souring running partners disappearing one by one.
By his estimation, he lost “about 90 per cent” of his friends during the ordeal, while adding the uncharacteristically dark view that he no longer trusted anybody.
“Even my own shadow, I will not trust,” he told the BBC.
***
Tokyo came and went on March 3 as if that shadow of Kipchoge ran the race.
A 10th-place finish — his worst result ever — and a time of 2:06:50 was jarring proof that the fallout to Kiptum’s death had deeply affected him.
Kipchoge later explained that he had three days in Tokyo in which he did not sleep, heavily impacting his ability to win, let alone contend with his personal best.
As such, Paris now looms larger for Kipchoge than anyone could’ve even dreamt of when he crossed the line in 2020, 1 minute and 20 seconds quicker than anyone.
His 10-year gift to the running world may never be touched, and will forever inspire anyone who has laced on a trainer.
Repeat disappointment in Paris this weekend won’t dull his incredible legacy any further.
But there’s no denying that, due to circumstances beyond his control, the once-weightless Kipchoge has been burdened by the entwining of his story with that of his successor.
When Kipchoge steps forward onto the Parisian pavement on Saturday, he will do so trying to outrun not only his rivals, but also the ghost of Kiptum’s loss, and the demons that have proceeded it.
Only in victory, can Kipchoge truly set his story free once more.
Perhaps, in a way, Kipchoge gets to race Kiptum after all.
Source Agencies
