Kipchoge and the Netherlands job – as the Kenyan sets his sights on Tokyo

Kipchoge’s new path to Olympic glory

JOHANNESBURG, April 23 (ANA) – In year’s to come Kenyan Eliud Kipchoge’s victory at the NN Mission Marathon at Twente Airport, in Enschede, The Netherlands, over the weekend, the records might show that it was just another victory for the greatest men’s marathoner ever.

The triumph, however, was anything but trivial. There were serious concerns over the future of Kipchoge following his worst result-ever in a 42.2km event at the London Marathon in October last year. There he finished eighth, and it was a far cry from his dominant performances in 11 of his previous 12 marathons.

It’s not uncommon for a top athlete to have a bad day in the marathon, but that just never happened to Kipchoge until the event in London.

He’s the only man to have completed the 42.2km distance in under two hours in an unofficial special event called the Ineos 1:59 Challenge. Kipchoge is also the current world record holder with his time of 2:01:39 he ran at the Berlin Marathon in 2018.

Up until the 2020 London Marathon, Kipchoge had won 11 of the 12 marathons he had competed in – with the only blemish on his record being the second place he claimed at the 2013 Berlin Marathon.

While many will point to the fact that it was just one race, and that Kipchoge is human after all – the unusually poor result came at the age of 35. Now aged 36, it was believed Kipchoge may just be beginning to feel the effects of his total domination in the marathon for close to a decade.

Or it really could have been just a bad day at the office, and the race in the Netherlands showed Kipchoge is shaping up to defend the Olympic Marathon title he won in 2016.

At the NN Mission Marathon, despite having to contend with some late changes to the race plans as the event had originally been set for April 11 in Hamburg, Kipchoge delivered the goods once again. New lockdown restrictions meant the event could no longer be held in the German city. The race was moved to The Netherlands at an airport where the runners repeated a loop of around 5km.

With the win, Kipchoge showed he will still be the man to beat at the Tokyo Olympics later this year.

His winning time of 2:04:30 was the fastest in the world this year.

“Mission accomplished,” said Kipchoge. “The conditions were really good, a bit windy, but I had no complaints. The race was perfect. This was the real test towards Tokyo. It’s good to have a marathon a few months before the Olympics to test my fitness.”

If Kipchoge does go on to win his second Olympic gold, few will remember his poor result last year in London, and perhaps even fewer will recall his win in The Netherlands. But it may just be that The Netherlands was where Kipchoge took his first comeback step to cementing his legendary status. – African News Agency (ANA), Editing by Michael Sherman