April 14 was marked in red on the calendar of athletics history. The Dutch Rotterdam was the chosen point for immortality and the step towards history for breaking human limits and thus achieving one of those conquests that enter the legends of sports. Kelvin Kiptum (1999-2024) had the entire season scheduled to attack both the Marathon world record and the gold at the Paris Games in the Netherlands a few months later. He was only going to be seen in the large city through which the Meuse River crosses before taking the French capital on August 10. None of that will come. “The route is ideal, I'll go for it,” said the world record holder, who was training up to 270 kilometers a week before a traffic accident took his life on February 12.
The new distance icon of Pheidippides was destined to be the first man in history to descend with the traditional two-hour methods in the 42 kilometer test. His death left orphaned the duel that the Kenyan runner was going to compete on the Paris asphalt with his compatriot Eliud Kipchoge, 38, in the Olympic Games marathon, an event that would have brought together millions of television viewers around the planet with the double incentive of knowing who would win and if anyone would be able to go under two hours. Two styles, two different athletes, but the same passion and the same challenge, doing kilometers and trying to enter the golden book of world athletics with two hours as a barrier. His name will remain in memory forever.
Rotterdam will remember the athlete this Sunday with a heartfelt minute of silence, and his family will receive a special trophy. All participants will wear a black ribbon and the number one number will be symbolically removed, before the thousands of athletes at the event experience what it is like to reach the finish line at the famous Coolsingel.
The death of the athlete put an end to a short but successful sporting career. He began his love affair with athletics in 2016. Just three years later he won two half marathons in 15 days with amazing times for his short experience: 60:48 in Copenhagen, Denmark, and 59:53 in Belfort, France. He alone had run three marathons at the age of 24. All with victory, and in all of them he left the world speechless. He debuted in Valencia, in December 2022, with the fastest time in history for a rookie in the race (2h.01:53) and later, in 2023, he won first in London to confirm himself with 2h01:25. No one had ever run so fast around the Thames. And on October 8 he broke the world distance record with 2h00:35 in Chicago, taking the previous record from Kipchoge, Princess of Asturias Sports Award winner 2023, in the 'Windy City'. «I knew that at some point I “I would be the fastest in the world,” he said after that race. Three tests were enough to dethrone the legend of Kipchoge as king of the distance and change the rules of the game. The three times were enough to put his three marks in the top 10 in history.
«We did hill sessions in the forest near his house. He was small, but he followed us, barefoot, after taking care of the goats and sheep. Rwandan Gervais Hakizimana, a man in the shadow of record-holder Kelvin Kiptum, said that he met the African runner in 2013 while training in the Eldoret area, in the Kenyan region of the Great Rift Valley, at an altitude of 2,500 meters. There they saw each other for the first and last time after they both met death on the road where the athlete, who dreamed of Olympic gold in Paris and under two hours in the marathon test, ran more than 250 kilometers a week.
«In 2020 the pandemic locked me in Kenya, I stayed there for a year and trained him in the forest. “I ran with him and then we started a marathon program in 2021,” Hakizimana explained in an interview, in which he explained for AFP that far from any elaborate dietary planning, the fastest marathoner on the planet ate simple products: homemade bread, fruits and local vegetables, Kenyan tea, lean meat and ugali, a porridge made with corn flour.
When he was not training he rested his body, either sleeping or eating. He never ran at 100% in training. Three days at 80% and another four, at 50%. All alternate. When current standards consider a maximum of 220 or 230 to avoid injuries, Kiptum averaged between 250 and 300 kilometers a week in total. “I have never felt suffering in a marathon,” stated the myth.
Unlike Kipchoge, whom Kiptum considered “the best ever”, and all those who shone before him, Kiptum almost never touched the track, his goal was always to be the fastest on the asphalt. He always talked about the world record.
#Rotterdam #marathon #Kelvin #Kiptum #dreamed #immortal #truth
