NAIROBI, July 30 (Xinhua) -- Marathon great Eliud Kipchoge is no stranger to make history and bounce back from setbacks to reign supreme in a decorated distance running career that has spanned two decades.
The Kenyan two-time Olympic champion will be attempting to do what no other athlete, male or female, has ever achieved when he goes for his third straight men's marathon gold at Paris 2024.
Kipchoge, who turns 40 in November, is out to mark a fairy-tale return to the same city where he won his first and only world title 21 years ago. Then, the Kenyan superstar was a fresh-faced 18-year-old who stunned retired Morocca's distance running legend Hicham El Guerrouj and Ethiopia's Kenenisa Bekele to take the men's 5,000m gold at the 2003 World Championships.
Whether he wins or not, Kipchoge, 39, will make history when he lines up for the men's marathon in France on August 10 as he will become the first and only Kenyan to compete at five Olympic Games.
"Winning a third Olympic [gold] medal would be a great thing. We have trained to go to France and give the fans a very good race. It will be good to run with spectators watching after what happened in Tokyo [where spectators were absent due to COVID-19 protocols]," Kipchoge stated.
Speaking recently as he wound up his training for the Games at Kaptagat in Kenya's Rift Valley, Kipchoge added that he was also aiming to become part of the first-ever Olympic marathon medal sweep.
"My teammates are very good and high class, energetic and disciplined runners. I believe we will run in a good way and all of us will make the podium," Kipchoge said in northwestern Kenya, where the marathoners have been training for the Olympics.
And he has a formidable support cast.
Benson Kipruto and the latest Kenyan marathon running sensation, Alexander Munyao, titleholders of the Tokyo and London Marathon titles respectively, complete the imposing Kenyan line-up for Paris.
They will be running to honor the life of world marathon record holder, the late Kelvin Kiptum, who passed away in a road accident in February.
"Kiptum was a fun guy and a talented athlete. We traveled together from Chicago in 2023 where we spoke a lot about making it to the Kenyan team for the Olympics. We will be going for the victory in Paris to pay the best tribute to him," Kipruto told Xinhua at his training base in Kaptagat.
Kipchoge first ran for Kenya at the 2004 Athens Olympics where he took bronze in the men's 5,000m before scaling up to silver at the same distance at Beijing 2008.
He failed to break into the men's 5,000m and 10,000m teams for the London 2012 Olympics -- the first career setback that saw him make a life-altering decision. It was the failure to make a third successive Olympics that saw Kipchoge take up road running, making the second fastest half-marathon debut of all time when he clocked 59:25 later that year in Lille, France.
In 2013, he celebrated a winning full marathon debut in Hamburg (2:04:05) to announce his arrival in the ultimate distance race that has catapulted him to international superstardom.
Since then, Kipchoge has strung together a marathon streak never witnessed before, with an astonishing 15 victories (12 coming in World Marathon Majors) across 19 starts.
He has broken the world record twice in Berlin (2018 and 2022) - a race he has won an unprecedented five times, overtaking the great Ethiopian Haile Gebrsellasie, who won in Berlin four times.
Kipchoge also became the first man to run the 42.195km marathon distance in under two hours when he clocked 1:59:40.2 at the specially-prepared INEOS 1:59 challenge in Vienna in 2019, Austria, having come only five seconds short of the feat at the Nike Breaking 2 effort two years earlier.
At the 2016 Rio Olympics, Kipchoge became only the second Kenyan after the late Samuel Wanjiru to win men's marathon gold, before returning to successfully defend his title at Tokyo 2020.
With ups and downs afterwards behind him and after months of training, Kipchoge is now ready for what will be his Olympic swansong, competing again against his old foe Kenenisa and the rest of the imposing field in Paris. ■