The running world was stunned when 24-year-old Kelvin Kiptum came so close to breaking the two-hour marathon barrier, before what was supposed to be a thrilling career came to an abrupt end last month in a car accident. Ta. It took Kiptam's life.
In case you missed this story: Kiptum, the latest in a long list of world-class runners from Kenya, won last October's Chicago Marathon in 2 hours and 35 seconds. His compatriot Eliud Kipchoge has run the marathon distance twice before, with faster times of 2:00:25 in 2017 and 1:59:41 in 2019, but those times were special. It was an exhibition, not a regular marathon race, and Kipchoge was supported by his team. A pacemaker, a lead car, and the cyclists who pedaled next to him and handed him fluids.
Kiptam's time came at a major marathon that was, at least nominally, a contest. However, as the young runner later said, he thought he could break the world record by the 3-mile mark, but by the 10-kilometer mark he had lost it. For the rest of the match, he continued to beat second place by nearly three minutes. It was Chicago's third marathon victory in the past 10 months, following a 2:01:52 in Valencia, Spain in December 2022 and a 2:01:25 at the London Marathon last spring. These are his three of his seven fastest marathons ever run.
Kiptum, smiling and blowing kisses all over Chicago as he sprinted towards the finish line, made us all want to know just how much he was capable of. He was the clear favorite to win this year's Olympic marathon. In Kipchoge's absence, he will run without seeing the challenge of his brightest rising star.
Kipchoge, who won in 2016 and 2021, could become the only person, male or female, to win the Olympic marathon three times, and a win over Kiptum would have increased that feat. On the other hand, a win against Kipchoge would have confirmed that Kiptum is the best in the world, not just in pure speed but also in competitiveness.
Two larger themes emerge in this story. One is about the limits of human performance. Before 1954, some calculated that it might be impossible for a human to run a mile in less than his four minutes. Currently, 1,755 milers have achieved sub-4. In a regular marathon, he doesn't care if he breaks two hours, it's a matter of when. Kiptam probably would have done so sometime in the future, when everything might have gone as well as it did last October.
Another theme is the economic and physical challenges of life in countries that have produced many of the sport's greatest athletes.
For East African runners, the purse of the winner of a major marathon is enough money to build a nice house. Kiptam was his father's only child. Any prize money he might earn in the future would have provided his family with financial stability in a depressed economy. One consolation for the loss is that Kenya's President William Ruto has guaranteed the speedy completion of a house being built for Mr Kiptum's wife and two children. More success in marathons (Olympic gold medals, wins in Boston and New York, speaking appearances, etc.) would allow him to send Kiptam's children to college, care for his parents, and help his community. It might have been.
Weak infrastructure in developing countries may also be part of the problem. Kiptam was driving on the region's typically rough roads at 11pm when he apparently hit one of Kenya's many potholes. His accident is reminiscent of another accident involving a Kenyan marathon star. Three months after winning the 1997 Boston Marathon, Ramek's Agta was driving on an unfamiliar road in Kenya when he missed a curve and crashed. The thieves showed up, recognized Laguta as a celebrity, and beat him severely, either to rob him or because they were angry that they couldn't find him carrying the prize money they knew he had won. .
footnote: Kiptum's birthday is officially listed as December 2, 1999. But for Kenyan, Ethiopian, and other African runners, their actual year of birth (and therefore their actual age) is notoriously unreliable. A source with experience in Kenya said Kiptum was at least 30 years old.
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John Stifler teaches writing and economics at the University of Massachusetts and has written extensively for magazines and newspaper operations. Contact him at jstifler@umass.edu.
1 Comment
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