Joshua Cheptegei appears relaxed and happy at the hotel in Valencia, next to the City of Arts and Sciences, where he has just announced that on December 3 he will debut in the marathon in this city. From the table where he is speaking, he can see, in the background, behind the window, a panel in the middle of a roundabout announcing the 10,000m world record (26m 11.00s) that he achieved in Valencia, at the Turia Stadium, a 7 October 2020. That was the year chosen to play the Tokyo Games, but the pandemic turned everything upside down and the Ugandan, given that there were going to be no medals in contention, took advantage of the autumn to appropriate the world records of 5,000 m and 10,000m.
The Olympic and world champion arrived on Saturday directly from Lausanne. He left the junk and went down to dinner at a restaurant with the people from his team, the NN Running Team, and the organization. Cheptegei ordered a plate of chicken rice, but the rice town let him down and left it half done. The day before, in Switzerland, he had fought a savage battle against Berihu Aregawi. The Ethiopian took the pulse. This Monday, Cheptegei will fly to Amsterdam at six in the morning at the beginning of a trip, also a marathon, back home, to Kapchorwa, on the slopes of Mount Elgon, on the border between Uganda and Kenya, which will not end until Tuesday afternoon. That’s how it is every time he has to compete in Europe or on another continent. “And that now, from the airport to Kapchorwa, it is only a seven hour drive. When I went for the first time, the 240-kilometre journey took eleven hours”, recalls Jurrie van der Valden, his representative, the man who has programmed the athlete’s race in detail together with Addy Ruiter, his coach, a former triathlete who until then he worked freelance for Ikea.
When a Ugandan trainer asked Van der Valden for help in the spring of 2014, Cheptegei had just ridden a cross-country championship and had finished seventh. Shortly after, in May, he went to India, to Bangalore, and ran a 10K in which he could only be beaten by Geoffrey Kamworor. “It was clear that Joshua was someone special, very talented,” explains the agent while the athlete, dressed in a red tracksuit from his team, addresses a small group of journalists. “But he trained without a system. In 2015 he and his compatriot Kiprotich went to Kaptagat, in Kenya, to train for four or five months in Patrick Sang’s group, with Eliud Kipchoge and Geoffrey Kamworor”.
When he returned to Uganda, Cheptegei told his manager that he had been doing great, but he was not going to be able to inspire the next generation of Ugandan athletes. “For me it is very important to leave a legacy for the young people who come from behind. Moses Kipsiro was the first, then Stephen Kiprotich came, but they both had to go to Kaptagat to train, and now I’m in charge of creating the best possible environment —he had an athletics track and a gym built in Kapchorwa— for the boys who want to practice athletics”, says Cheptegei.
Its debut at the Trinidad Alfonso Valencia Marathon will take place halfway between the World Cup in Budapest, four months before, and the Olympic Games in Paris, eight months later. In both cities, Cheptegei will contest both the 10,000m, the test in which he seems to be the favourite, and the 5,000m, much more open and with fierce competition with Aregawi, Kejelcha, Kiplimo, Katir and, above all, the Norwegian Jakob Ingebrigtsen.
Paco Borao, the veteran president of SD Correcaminos, the club that organizes the marathon, listens to Cheptegei’s statements and smiles when the athlete winks. “Valencia is a special place for me,” says the Ugandan. An affirmation that comes from his world record of 10,000m in 2020, but also from the record of 10 kilometers (26m 38s) that he achieved a year earlier, in December 2019. The privilege lasted a few weeks, which elapsed until that, in January, again in Valencia, his record passed into the hands of the Kenyan Rhonex Kipruto, today sanctioned for doping. Cheptegei makes it clear that he does not want controversy. “I only worry about running healthy and clean. I am a big advocate of integrity in athletics, because this is not only what you do but also how you do it.
The jump to the marathon, occasional at the moment, implies a series of changes. One of those who worry in their environment is that of the footprint. Photographs of the races in which he broke the world record of 10,000, in Valencia, and 5,000, in Monaco, two months earlier, showed a painfully crooked foot, in an exaggerated pronation – the inward tilt of the foot – that forced his team to meet with Nike, the brand that fits him, to solve this problem that could only degenerate into injuries. “I’ve been working with the people at Nike so that the spikes have better grip in the heel area, so I can run faster but above all without hurting myself.” On Friday, in Lausanne, his tread was much more neutral, an essential step when autumn arrives and he begins to run over 200 kilometers a week to face a test with just over two hours of racing.
But before this, already in the green Kapchorwa, surrounded by banana trees, coffee plantations and postcard waterfalls, Cheptegei, 26 years old —27 the day he made his debut in Valencia—, who likes to put his legs in the water after training frosts of the river, will focus on preparing to achieve his third consecutive world gold in the 10,000m and try his first in the 5000m, a distance in which he has been an Olympic champion. Addy Ruiter, the man who set up a training camp in 2016, has already been installed in Uganda for some time. A year later, in 2017, Ruiter and his representative began to talk about forming a group of marathoners for the day, so They anticipated that after Paris 2024, Cheptegei would switch to the marathon. That day has been brought forward: it will be December 3 in Valencia.
You can follow EL PAÍS Sports on Facebook and Twitteror sign up here to receive our weekly newsletter.
#Cheptegei #chooses #Valencia #debut #marathon