If you’ve ever wanted to be at the birth of a world record in athletics and didn’t know how to do it, we’ve got a tip for you. Get some finances together and get close to a modest 37 year old named Eliud Kipchoge. He claimed about 50,000 dollars for the event.

This Kenya from the Nandi Plateau in western Kenya will probably beat your record, as he is a specialist in it. In what discipline? In a marathon. He has been the best in the world for many years.

He has won 15 major marathons in the last 9 years. Only once was he second and once his eighth. In addition, in addition to regular races, the experimental marathon in Vienna, organized and financed by company owner Ineos Sir Ratcliffe, where he was the first and by far the only person in history to reach a marathon distance of under two hours.

By the way, he also set a regular world record at this track in September in Berlin with a time of 2:01:09. Its average speed is a dizzying 20.81 km/h. He managed each of the 15 stages, in which he had to go through 28 consecutive stages, in 4:19.4 minutes. That’s a better performance than most decathletes on this track. He beat Marko Korir second by almost five minutes.

But that didn’t really surprise anyone. Kipchoge “only” beat the previous world record from 2018 by a half-minute margin.

Kenyan runners earn about $3 million (75 million crowns) during their lifetime. This is a dizzying amount of money in Kenya. But despite being a millionaire, he still lives with his family in Kenya. He lives with his wife Grace Sugut, whom he met in elementary school, and their three children in a modest house in the center of the Eldoret region at 2,000 meters above sea level. However, as he prepares to race, he goes six days a week to the nearest settlement of Kaptagat, which is 500 meters higher. It is the main training center for Kenyan endurance athletes.

Eliud Kipchoge is a bit beyond our ideas of a modern millionaire-runner. He was a devout and grateful man who wanted to live an honest life. A devout Christian goes to church with his family on Sundays. When he talks about his life, it sounds old-fashioned. She emphasizes that she is lucky to have good people around her, that she receives love and support. He meant not only his wife, but also coach Patrick Sang.

It was Sang, a three-time silver medalist at the 1991, 1992 and 1993 Olympics and World Championships, who was actually in charge of Kipchoge’s career. It started, of course, “the Kenyan way” with running to and from school. No, don’t think it’s a dizzying distance. About 6 kilometers a day, but every day. The real run didn’t come until Eliud was a teenager.

“I started running because my neighbor Patrick Sang is an athlete and I wanted to be like him. Patrick was from the same village as me and my mother was his teacher. His success really inspires me,” Kipchoge said frequently.

During preparations for the Kenyan championship, he wrote to Sang asking if he would make a training plan for him. And she selflessly sent them to him without them actually getting close to each other. That’s when Kipchoge’s running journey really began. “Patrick is still my coach, although today he is more than just an athletics coach. He’s also a life coach, a business coach and that’s what sets him apart from other coaches,” the famous runner recently explained to the Deutsche Welle website.

One of Eliud’s first major races was a 10 kilometer run in 2002. He was 18 years old and won the race. “That’s when I first fell in love with running. If I miss a day running now, it makes me sick.”

Within a year, Kipchoge won his first individual world title in the junior race at the World Cross Country Championships. And he also set a world junior record at 5,000 meters on the track.

You can probably guess what was extraordinary about Kipchoge’s career. He started winning as a young boy and lasted until he was 37 years old. Not yet. That’s 20 years of top running.

It must be in his genes, but this wonderful Kenyan also attributes it to some of the values ​​he holds in life. “Courage to face anything in life. Family values, self-discipline values, consistency values. I can’t live without these values, it’s not Eliud.”

A very brilliant career came with the marathon. First, in 2012, he tried his first two half marathons and was successful. The following year, in the spring, he already ran his first marathon in Hamburg at 2:05:30 and won straight away. He then finished the season with a second place at the famous track in Berlin.

To say he is the best marathon runner in history is bold. Before him, Abebe Bikila of Ethiopia (1960 and 1964) and East German marathoner Waldemar Cierpinski (1976 and 1980) had won two Olympic gold medals…

But many experts also say so. “Eliud Kipchoge is the best in history…” wrote top running coach and bestselling author (like On Top) Steve Magness. “His dominance in the big sport of the modern era is unprecedented.”