Kipchoge dodges questions
What was wrong with the untouchable king?
04/18/2023 10:51 am
Eliud Kipchoge suffered a bitter bankruptcy in Boston. This begs the question: is the Kenyan marathon king’s prime over? The world record holder does not want to speak publicly after the race. A statement after sixth place is only available via notification.
Eliud Kipchoge hobbled a bit across the lobby of the Copley Square Hotel. Did his right foot hurt? Was that why the marathon star went bankrupt in Boston? Or did he have to tear it down because he got hungry after missing his drink bottle after 30 kilometers? But the questions remained unanswered, Kipchoge did not speak, the two-time Olympic champion, the world record holder, the hero of Kenya only issued a press release.
“Today was a tough day for me,” said Kipchoge, now 38, in it. After 2:09:23 hours in wind and rain, he only finished sixth in the legendary race in Boston, around three and a half minutes behind his compatriot Evans Chebet. “I tried as hard as I could,” said Kipchoge, “but sometimes you have to accept that today is not the day to raise the bar.”
Nobody in history has set the hurdle in the marathon higher than Kipchoge, under laboratory conditions he stayed under the two-hour mark in Vienna in 2019, he only pushed the official world record to 2:01:09 in Berlin seven months ago. In Boston he lost only his third marathon after 2013 in Berlin against the then world record holder Wilson Kipsang and 2020 in London, when conditions were similar to those in Boston.
Maybe bad weather just doesn’t suit Kipchoge? Or is he no longer unbeatable? “In sport you win and lose and there is always tomorrow to take on a new challenge,” he said. Next year in Paris he definitely wants to win his third Olympic gold in a row – that has never happened before. But the rivals now know: Kipchoge is not untouchable.