Sit Down, All Other Sports—Running Owns the World’s Greatest Athlete – runnersworld.com

Watching Eliud Kipchoge run a marathon is like watching the sun rise. Not sunrise, that cheap tangerine moment when the sun first cracks the horizon, that
insurance-​commercial symbol of a fresh start, new day, whatever. But the sun, rising. That inexorable progress, becalmed, indifferent, a relentless passage across the hours of a morning. Yes, that blinding disc of light, climbing the same morning sky we all live beneath, a movement you might reasonably forget to assess as you travel each day toward work: through your bedroom window, above your garden, framed over your coffee shop, hanging above the interstate on your commute.

That sun, rising, and Kipchoge, running—both exceedingly small images captured in a photograph—are incomprehensibly grand considered against the entire planet. He is a spectacle. Behold, Kipchoge, the distance runner of our age, the man who brushed against the two-hour marathon barrier, who is arguably the greatest of all time. He smiles when he runs. The sun is just your average star in cosmic terms, and Kipchoge, the 2016 Olympic gold medalist, is as humble—the first person to tell anyone who asks that he is just another man on a run.

Is that humility why no one seems to know that we live in Kipchoge era? I mean, what’s with you guys? You aren’t talking it up. Kipchoge rises! Forget Serena Williams, Steph Curry, Mike Trout, Tom Brady. Face it. They’re done. Consider the steely, 33-year-old Kenyan, who runs like a light-boned animal, the man with the gentle face, the heart of a poet, the soul of a father. For me, watching Kipchoge work a marathon is the greatest pleasure that sport offers at this moment in history. It’s worth braving the perils of live streaming, slogging through the cranky clickbait of YouTube, even dealing with the commercial interruptions that besiege the rare television network broadcast of a marathon, simply to see Kipchoge run.

Maybe you don’t buy it. Then perhaps you don’t know Kipchoge as the greatest force on today’s world marathon stage. He just broke—no, crushed—the world record, running 2:01:39 in Berlin. And here, more numbers: He finished his first half-marathon in under an hour, the third fastest debut time ever. A year later, he won his first marathon at Hamburg, beating the field by more than two minutes, setting a course record. In Berlin later that same year, his first major, he finished second, behind former world record holder Wilson Kipsang. Kipchoge, running in his second marathon ever, posted the fifth-fastest time in history. Since then, Kipchoge has won every marathon he’s run on the world stage, including the gold medal in Rio. Nine straight, including Berlin three times, and London twice. Beyond that, as part of Nike’s Breaking2 project, in an attempt to record the first sub-two-hour marathon, Kipchoge ran the fastest 26.2 time ever recorded (2:00:25) on the Formula One track in Monza, Italy, behind a pace car, far ahead of his fellow team members.

Jason Suarez

Better still, Kipchoge is an elegant soul. He doesn’t taunt his rivals, or belittle his competition. His social media presence is measured and humble. He is wickedly competitive, yet he doesn’t seem to pay attention to his rivals in any way. On April 18, before the start of the London Marathon, Kipchoge tweeted, “Running a very beautiful race is what I have on my mind.” He won. Beautifully, too. He is married, the father of three children, and lives a Spartan life, eats local, doesn’t use supplements. He maintains an elite training camp in Kenya near the Rift Valley, where he supports and trains with scores of young Kenyan runners, whom he houses and feeds. When living there, he rooms with a training partner. In between running sessions, Kipchoge works the farm, collects and chops vegetables. He cleans toilets, without making a thing of it. “In life, the idea is to be happy,” he says. “So I believe in calm, simple, and low-profile life. You live simple, you train hard and live an honest life. Then you are free.” Come on, you might say. But seriously. This from the GOAT.

Character matters. It’s the foundation of what makes athletes important. But numbers, times, records are an essential part of the truth of sports, the underlying certainty that we can measure the depth of our capabilities in public moments of competition. You gotta have the numbers.

Watch: Runners attempt to maintain Eliud Kipchoge’s record-breaking marathon pace.

Kipchoge obliges that need by winning, consistently. His competitive record over the years reflects the steadiness with which he runs a race; absent are low spots, surprise, or miscalculation. This is his moment. So far, his numbers are undeniably Ruthian. History, however recent, tells us it’s a great thing to witness. Kipchoge is Tiger Woods at his best. Martina Navratilova, mid-career. Michael Jordan in the shank of his greatness. You don’t have to forget other sports icons. You just have to know what’s out there, climbing the skies above. You just have to know Kipchoge.