Nairobi, Jan 12 (AFP\/APP):Kenya’s two-time Olympic marathon champion Eliud Kipchoge said Wednesday he is seeking to make it a record-breaking three in a row at the 2024 Games in Paris.<\/p>\n
“I still have something boiling in my stomach that’s why I am looking forward to it (racing in Paris),” Kipchoge said at a virtual media conference from his training ground in Kenya.<\/p>\n
Besides Kipchoge, only Abebe Bikila (1960, 1964) and Waldemar Cierpinski (1976, 1980) have won consecutive Olympic marathon titles.<\/p>\n
The 37-year-old Kenyan, who won back-to-back titles at the 2016 and 2020 Olympics in Rio and Tokyo, also Wednesday signed a new sponsorship deal with British chemicals giant Ineos to prepare for the Games.<\/p>\n
He made history in October 2019 when he smashed the two-hour marathon barrier, running 1hr 59min 40.2sec in a Vienna experiment that does not, however, count as an official record.<\/p>\n
“I am excited to keep breaking barriers,” Kipchoge said in a statement.
\nThe Kenyan world record holder, whose official marathon record stands at 2:01:39, will be just a few months shy of his 40th birthday when he competes in Paris in July 2024.<\/p>\n
If he succeeds, Kipchoge would also become the oldest Olympic marathon champion, beating Romanian Constantina Dita who won the Beijing women’s marathon in 2008 at the age of 38.<\/p>\n
Kipchoge is an ambassador for Paris 2024 and in October led more than 3,600 amateur runners in a special race in the French capital to celebrate 1,000 days before the start of the Games.<\/p>\n
After his Tokyo victory, which cemented his status as the greatest marathon runner of all time, Kipchoge said he wanted to inspire the next generation of marathon runners.<\/p>\n
“My main motivation is to inspire the whole world and the next one is the love of sport,” Kipchoge told Olympics.com at the time.<\/p>\n
“When I say the inspiration to the whole world is that I still need the next generation. I trust by 2024 I will have made the world a running world.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Nairobi, Jan 12 (AFP\/APP):Kenya’s two-time Olympic marathon champion Eliud Kipchoge said Wednesday he is seeking to make it a record-breaking three in a row at the 2024 Games in Paris. “I still have something boiling in my stomach that’s why I am looking forward to […]<\/p>\n
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