By Chris Chavez
July 13, 2023
Marathon world record holder and two-time Olympic champion Eliud Kipchoge will race the Berlin Marathon on Sept. 24.
What you need to know:
– Kipchoge is looking to become the first athlete to win the Berlin Marathon five times. Last year, he broke his own world record in 2:01:09 and tied Haile Gebrselassie with four career wins at the race.
– Kipchoge said: “My run has taken me across the world. Along the way ... there are ups and downs. And right now I run toward Paris 2024. But to achieve what inspires me in Paris, I must return to my special place. Back to Berlin.”
– Kipchoge has won 10 World Marathon Majors in his career. (Chicago 1x, Berlin 4x, London 4x, Tokyo 1x)
– Kipchoge is coming off a sixth-place finish at the Boston Marathon in 2:09:23 while dealing with an upper leg issue. Kipchoge has said that his plan is to try and win all six Majors before the end of his career. After the loss in Boston, he said: “The outcome for yesterday actually destabilized everything, and I need to go back, rearrange again, and come back with a solid program.”
– At this time, it appears Kipchoge has opted to run Berlin instead of debuting at the New York City Marathon on November 5th. In 2021, Kipchoge’s occasional rival Kenenisa Bekele ran both the Berlin and NYC Marathons, finishing 3rd and 6th, but Kipchoge has never raced two marathons that close together in his career to date.
– Last month, Kipchoge told CITIUS MAG, “The six stars is still the dream. We’re still seeing what will happen but it’s still a dream.”
CITIUS MAG was in Kenya last month and captured a track workout with Kipchoge and other members of the NN Running team.
Our Take
As a native New Yorker, I’m waiting for the day Kipchoge tests himself on our marathon course. Now it looks like we’re going to have to wait until after the Paris Olympics. The ideal storybook ending for Kipchoge was to win Boston ‘23, win New York ‘23, and win the Olympic gold medal for a third time before riding off into the sunset. Few top athletes actually get their fairytale ending. Even the great Usain Bolt lost the final 100m race of his professional career.
Kipchoge seems to indicate he’ll still run New York and Boston, presumably in 2024 and 2025, to try and win all six Majors. But Kipchoge is 38 years old and he was beaten handily this year by Evans Chebet, which raised legitimate questions as to who is the best marathoner in the world right now. With victories in Boston ‘22, NYC ‘22, and Boston ‘23, Chebet has a compelling case. But until someone else replicates Kipchoge’s resume from 2014-2022, the greatest of all time isn’t a debate.
My guess is that we will not see Kipchoge vs. Kelvin Kiptum, the 23-year-old who gave the world record a scare with a 2:01:25 at the London Marathon, going head-to-head any time soon. I believe Kiptum will run the Chicago Marathon based on a few rumblings from my trip to Kenya. This presents Kipchoge with an opportunity to try and lower his world record before Kiptum takes another stab at it. The two weeks from Berlin on Sept. 24 to Chicago on Oct. 8 could be very interesting.
Chris Chavez
Chris Chavez launched CITIUS MAG in 2016 as a passion project while working full-time for Sports Illustrated. He covered the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro and grew his humble blog into a multi-pronged media company. He completed all six World Marathon Majors and is an aspiring sub-five-minute miler.
