KAPTAGAT, Kenya (AFP) — When he started out running in the early 2000s, a young Eliud Kipchoge simply wanted to get on a plane and go to Europe.
Two decades later, the Kenyan marathon legend is heading to Paris for what could be his final challenge at the 2024 Olympics.
At 39, he said he is hoping to make history on 11 August by becoming the “first human being” to win the Olympic marathon three times in succession, overtaking Ethiopia’s Abebe Bikila (1960, 1964) and Waldemar Cierpinski of Germany (1976, 1980).
It was in Paris in 2003 that the then 18-year-old made a thunderous international debut, snatching the 5,000 meters world championship gold ahead of favorites Hicham El Gerrouj and Kenenisa Bekele.
But Kipchoge’s first major prize ended up being his only one on the track.
It was on the road, which he turned to after failing to qualify for the 2012 London Olympics, that he would achieve glory.
With his long, metronomic stride, he has twice broken the marathon world record — streaking to two hours and 01:39 minutes in 2018 and 2:01:09 in 2022.
He is the only man to have covered the 42.195-kilometers marathon distance in under two hours, albeit during a specially organized, unofficial race in Vienna in 2019.
He has won 16 of the 20 official marathons he has run since 2013, including 11 victories in the majors (five in Berlin, four in London, one each in Tokyo and Chicago), alongside Olympic golds in 2016 and 2021.
The youngest of four children, Kipchoge was raised by his mother, a kindergarten teacher, in the village of Kapsisiywa in the foothills of Kenya’s Rift Valley.
His father died when he was a baby.
Young Eliud loved running but didn’t dream of glory.
“Running is normal in our village, in our community, you run up and down to school, to the shopping center,” he told AFP in an interview.
He decided to take a chance in athletics, “but it was not about aiming to become a big runner. I just wanted to get into a plane and fly to Europe,” he said.
“I didn’t know that being an athlete can put more food on my table for my family and my siblings.”
As a teenager, he often spotted a neighbor during his training sessions, someone he had watched on television winning silver at the 1992 Olympics: 3,000-meter steeplechaser Patrick Sang.
In 2001, Kipchoge approached him to ask for a training programme and Sang scribbled one on his arm.
“Then he kept coming for more,” Sang said.
“At that moment, I could not say that there was anything special about this guy. But in retrospect. I can say that this is somebody who knew where he wanted to go. He was really determined.”
Since then, the two men have barely left each other’s side, developing a quasi-filial relationship.
Kipchoge devotes his life to running, carefully recording each of his training sessions in notebooks.
Since 2002, he has lived nine months a year at an elite camp run by management agency Global Sports Communications in Kaptagat, a village in western Kenya at an altitude of 2,500 meters.
He rises early, with eating, shopping and rest punctuating his monastic existence. He meets his wife and three children on weekends at the family home in the neighboring town of Eldoret.