With Tokyo, Kipchoge has now won four out of six World Marathon Majors. (This has led to what my colleague Alex Hutchinson recently referred to as “Kipchoge fatigue.”) It sometimes feels like the running media world has given up on trying to find new ways to contextualize Kipchoge’s dominance in a notoriously unpredictable event in the same way that he drops his rivals in the latter stages of the marathon, Kipchoge has outlasted our ability to find new words to extol his brilliance. In doing so, he improved his career marathon record to 14 wins in 16 races. He ended up winning handily, in a time of two hours, two minutes, and 40 seconds. Somehow, not having my support didn’t seem to affect him in any noticeable way. Which is why I’m all the more annoyed that, due to poor planning and technical difficulties, I failed to watch the livestream of Kipchoge in last Sunday’s Tokyo Marathon. Running fans would be wise to savor each and every one of his semiannual displays of athletic mastery.
Like a champion prizefighter at the height of his fame, he has the luxury of being able to pick his bouts.
He only competes twice a year-if you count his sub-two exhibitions, which weren’t “races,” strictly speaking, but something more along the lines of corporate-sponsored performance art.
Since winning the 2016 Delhi Half, he has focused exclusively on the full marathon. Eliud Kipchoge, the greatest marathoner in history, does not race very often.
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