Eliud Kipchoge today made history by finishing his INEOS159 challenge in under two hours. He cut the tape in 1:59:40.
The race started at 9:15am Kenyan time, Saturday morning in Vienna, Austria. Kipchoge skipped the 2019 World Athletics Championships and Berlin Marathon where he set the World record to train for today’s event.
This makes him the most successful long distance athlete of all time, making him the first man in the history of the sport to complete the 42km race in under two-hours.
He won the Olympic marathon in 2016 and is the current marathon world record holder with a time of 2:01:39 hours.
HISTORY! pic.twitter.com/qjLfofhL5s
— Eliud Kipchoge (@EliudKipchoge) October 12, 2019
BERLIN MARATHON
Kipchoge’s world record run at the 2018 Berlin Marathon broke the previous world record by 1 minute and 18 seconds.
Kipchoge won his first individual world championship title in 2003 by winning the junior race at the IAAF World Cross Country Championships and setting a world junior record over 5000 m on the track.
At the age of eighteen, he became the senior 5000 m world champion at the 2003 World Championships in Athletics with a championships record, then followed with an Olympic bronze for Kenya in 2004 and a bronze at the 2006 IAAF World Indoor Championships.
A five-time World Championship 5000m finalist, Kipchoge took silver medals at the 2007 World Championships, 2008 Summer Olympics and 2010 Commonwealth Games.
He switched to road running in 2012 and made the second-fastest ever half marathon debut with 59:25 minutes. On his marathon debut he won the 2013 Hamburg Marathon in a course record time.
His first victory at a World Marathon Major came at the Chicago Marathon in 2014, and he went on to become series champion for 2016, 2017, and 2018. He won the London Marathon a record 4 times.
Described as the greatest marathoner of the modern era”,Kipchoge has won 12 of the 13 marathons he has entered, his only loss being a second place behind Wilson Kipsang Kiprotich at the 2013 Berlin Marathon, where Kipsang broke the world record.
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