The Kenya born Athlete,Eluid Kipchoge has been in the news for completing a marathon in less than 2 hours.
It was a marathon that caught many people by surprise at the 500-metre final stretch that defined the making of history: the marathon distance has been completed in under two hours.
Eliud Kipchoge had kicked aside his other pacemakers. The Kenyan pointed to and waved at adoring galleries, 15 deep in the middle of a Vienna park, as he moved towards athletic immortality.
“That was the best moment in my life,” said Kipchoge of catching sight of the finish line. When he crossed it, the clock read 1hr 59min 40.2sec. In the inevitable, wide-ranging assessment of what this all means, at least this can be defined as a reference point for decades and generations to come.
Kipchoge shatters two-hour barrier to crash into the mainstream.
It was already known that Kipchoge was an extraordinary athlete. He merely pressed home the point on a misty morning in Austria. With the clock stopped and a sporting world looking on with awe, the 34-year-old Kenyan displayed all the physical strain of having walked for the morning papers.
“I felt a lot of pressure yesterday,” Kipchoge admitted. “I received a lot of calls of encouragement from all over the world saying even the president of Kenya has called to congratulate me. When you receive so many calls from high-profile people, there is pressure.”
The Kenyan Athlete described the period between a 4.50am wake-up call and his scheduled 8.15am start as the toughest of his life. What followed resembled blissful simplicity.
Giddy comparisons to other sporting and historical acts were inevitable and duly forthcoming. It is altogether fair to reference Roger Bannister, who 65 years ago achieved what had been widely perceived as impossible by running a mile in under four minutes. That Kipchoge has entered the domain of first man on the moon Neil Armstrong – as some commentators noted. This is indeed a great landmark.
