Eliud Kipchoge Was Supposed to Win the Boston Marathon. What Went Wrong?

Of those marathons, Kipchoge has won 15 of them, which is bananas. Too many things can go wrong over 26.2 miles. Even the best occasionally succumb to injury or intestinal distress. And even the best are susceptible to having a bad day.

“He really is the Michael Jordan or the Tom Brady of the marathon,” said Mark Coogan, a former Olympic marathoner who now coaches Team New Balance Boston, an elite running team. “But those guys didn’t win every game, either. Or they had some subpar performances where they weren’t at their best. And I think that’s going to happen over 20 marathons. You’re going to have one or two that aren’t quite right.”

In Boston, it was a sign of Kipchoge’s celebrity — a brand of fame that now transcends the insular world of marathoning — that his troubles overshadowed the brilliant performances of Evans Chebet, who defended his men’s title, and Hellen Obiri, who ran a savvy race to take the women’s crown. Like Kipchoge, both are Kenyan.

To Chebet’s credit, he did not appear remotely intimidated by Kipchoge. Chebet, 34, is now in the process of assembling his own Kipchoge-like streak, having won six of the last seven marathons he has entered.

“Eliud was not so much of a threat because the bottom line was that we trained well,” Chebet said of the months of pre-race work that he did with Benson Kipruto, a training partner who finished third. “Our confidence in the quality of our training made us feel good about taking on this race.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/18/sports/running-kipchoge-boston-marathon.html