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(01-Dec) — Eliud Kipchoge, history’s most dominant marathoner who holds the world record and two Olympic Marathon gold medals, will make his Boston Marathon debut next April, Boston Athletic Association officials announced this morning. By competing in Boston, the 38 year-old Kenyan will take another step towards winning all six commercial races of the Abbott World Marathon Majors. He’s already won in Berlin (2015, 2017, 2018, and 2022), Chicago (2014), London (2015, 2016, 2018, and 2019), and Tokyo (2022). If he were to win in Boston, that would leave only the TCS New York City Marathon for Kipchoge to conquer.
“I am happy to announce in April I will compete in the Boston Marathon, a new chapter in my Abbott World Marathon Majors journey,” Kipchoge said through a statement. “Good luck to all the runners running Boston in 2023.”
Despite having a long marathon career which began in Hamburg, Germany, in 2013, Kipchoge has only run one marathon in the United States and only two in the Americas (Chicago plus the Olympic Marathon in Rio de Janeiro in 2016). His mega-star status and place in the public imagination as the only human to run the marathon distance in under two hours (albeit in a special exhibition) will surely lift interest in next April’s Boston race beyond the usual running fanatics and Boston sports media.
As he did successfully in the Olympic Marathons in Rio in 2016 and Sapporo in 2021, Kipchoge will have to navigate Boston’s notoriously difficult course without the benefit of pacemakers. In his Olympic appearances he has shown that his ability to run tactical races is as good as any athlete who preceded him, but races like Boston run under championship conditions mean there are more variables that Kipchoge and his support team cannot control. The race only offers a bonus for a new course record, so athletes generally ignore the clock when running Boston. That’s a far cry from the carefully paced races that Kipchoge has run in Berlin where he set world records in 2018 (2:01:39) and again in 2022 (2:01:09). He also has no experience with the course like the 2022 champion Evans Chebet, another Kenyan, who will also compete next April 17, after winning the TCS New York City Marathon last month.
“To be a champion in Boston is something very special and for me it has even more meaning because it took me quite some time during my career…
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