Again, how wrong can you be?īehind all the world-record excitement, there were two encouraging American performances. No one even thought about a world record. How wrong can you be? No one expected today’s Berlin Marathon to match last year’s in excitement or significance. When Bekele did the same, it all seemed over.

Soon it was only three, as Gebrselassie and Korir drifted back. There were five there to halfway-Bekele and Legese always looking positive, plus Lemma, Leul Gebrselassie (all Ethiopia), and Kenyan Jonathan Korir. It was as if the words “negative split” had never crossed their consciousness. Then, outrageously, this year’s aspirants upped it, reaching 10K in 28:53, eight seconds up on Kipchoge’s 2018 split.įearlessness? Folly? They held that eight-second lead to 15K (43:29 to Kipchoge’s 43:37), and at halfway (1:01:05) they were still ahead. The lead pack’s first 5K split exactly replicated the 14:24 that opened his epic world record here a year ago. Right from the start today, Kipchoge was an invisible presence. A year before that, his fiancée suffered sudden death during a training run with him, a trauma he also managed eventually to put behind him. In the 2008 World Cross-Country Championships in Edinburgh, he lost a shoe in Scottish mud, turned back to dig it out, and clawed his way up through the field to win.

His consolation-along with winning 40,000 Euros and adding 30,000 Euros for running under 2:03:30-is a place in history for running the world’s second fastest marathon, and, more important, for sealing his status as the greatest distance runner of all time, even ahead of Kipchoge and Haile Gebrselassie, across the whole range of track (three Olympic gold medals, five world championships, plus the two still-standing world records), cross-country (where he has won 11 world gold medals) and the marathon.īekele’s ability to recover from setback is well proven. Three years ago in the 2016 Berlin Marathon, Bekele missed the then world record by six seconds. And maybe even I will run the Olympic marathon-but I have not decided.” I knew that although my training was not perfect, I was going much better than last year,” he said. I wanted to show that I can still race well. Eliud Kipchoge Aims to Make History in Vienna.

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