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Eliud Kipchoge Drops Out of the 2024 Olympic Marathon

It may be the two-time gold medalist’s final Olympic Games.

BY BRIAN DALEK

KIRILL KUDRYAVTSEV//Getty Images

In what may be his final Olympic Games, Eliud Kipchoge of Kenya dropped out of Saturday’s men’s marathon around the 31K mark. Today’s race was Kipchoge’s chance to be the first man to win the Olympic marathon three times in a career. His other Olympic marathon wins came in the Rio Olympics in 2016 and Tokyo in 2021.

“Today was a tough day at the office,” Kipchoge said about failing to finish the race. “You can train for a very long time but one day, it can happen. It’s like boxing. You can go to a training camp for five months and be knocked out in two seconds. But life will continue.”

Wearing a cooling headband for what was going to end up being a warm day, the race started relatively cool in the lower 60s on a clear day in Paris. Kipchoge hung with the lead pack for the first 15K until the notoriously challenging Paris Olympic Marathon hills started slowing paces.

After reaching Versailles and turning back to head toward Paris, Kipchoge was more than a minute off the lead pack, not within the top 50 runners. He split 25K to the 30K mark—the segment of the course from Chaville to Meudon with the steepest uphill and downhill—a little over 21 minutes, putting him more than 8 minutes off the lead pack. He was out of contention but gutting it out toward the finish line, buoyed by the Olympic crowd and his fellow runners.

“This is my worst marathon. I have never done a DNF (did not finish),” he said. “That’s life.”

Kipchoge described his final few kilometers when in the media area after race, appearing in only his shorts. “I walked for about 2 kilometers, there were about 300 people walking with me. That’s why I don’t have my shirt, the socks, the shoes, the race number.”

On why he had to call it quits on Saturday, he noted it was an injury and not the grueling course. “I had a pain in my back at about 20 kilometers and decided not to finish and try to get out,” he said. “The hills didn’t affect me at all. The pain made me stop.”

Win or not, Kipchoge’s extensive career has earned him G.O.A.T. status in the running world. He’s eclipsed the world record mark twice in the marathon—both times at the Berlin Marathon—and became the only man ever to run under 2 hours in a non-record eligible marathon attempt in Vienna back in 2019.

Cameron Spencer//Getty Images

For a period, Kipchoge was untouchable at the distance. He won 10 marathons in a row from 2014 to 2019. He finally showed himself as human at the 2020 London Marathon (a race he’s still won four times), when he finished a surprising 8th. He bounced back by winning the marathon in the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, then winning both the Tokyo Marathon and Berlin Marathon in 2022.

Some recent marathons have been a step back for Kipchoge. He was 6th overall in his first Boston Marathon in 2023 but returned to form with a Berlin win later that year. Earlier this year Kipchoge placed 10th in the Tokyo Marathon.

He’s openly spoken about the strain he has taken after the tragic passing of the new marathon world record holder Kelvin Kiptum in a car crash in February 2024. He told the BBC that he was was subjected to online abuse wrongly linking him to Kiptum’s death.

“I was shocked that people (on) social media platforms are saying, ‘Eliud is involved in the death of this boy,’ That was my worst news ever in my life. I received a lot of bad things; that they will burn the (training) camp, they will burn my investments in town, they will burn my house, they will burn my family. It did not happen but that is how the world is. What happened has (made) me not trust anybody. Even my own shadow, I will not trust.”

And on the track, he has two other Olympic medals, both in the 5,000 meters, with silver in 2008, and bronze in 2004.

Regarding his future in the sport, Kipchoge was non-commital about what’s to come, but he didn’t indicate retiring just yet.

“I don’t want to comment on what will happen tomorrow. I want to try to evolve—if I don’t evolve, then I do other things,” he said. “I don’t know what my future will hold. I will think about it over the next three months. I still want to try to run some marathons.”

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