Eliud Kipchoge: Inside the camp, and the minds, of the greatest marathon runner of all time

In his 2006 essay, ‘Roger Federer as Religious Experience’, the late, great American writer David Foster Wallace wrote that “beauty is not the goal of competitive sports, but high-level sports are a prime venue for the expression of human beauty”.

“It might be called kinetic beauty,” he added. “Its power and appeal are universal.”

Watch Kipchoge run, and you’ll see his point. It’s difficult to find a sportsperson so impossibly suited to his craft, as if his entire reason for being is to coast over the ground at 4:40 per mile, a pace that for most would feel like a sprint.

But when Kipchoge does it, his head has virtually no vertical motion, his face so relaxed that he looks bored. His arms hang loose, swinging casually, his fingers in a gentle tuck, as if holding an invisible stick. His feet don’t so much hit the ground as stroke it, his toes pushing off the road with the elegant, balletic grace of a dancer.

Kipchoge is to marathon running as Jordan is to basketball, Williams is to tennis, and Gretzky is to hockey: an absolute monster, unquestioned in their supremacy.

Have you ever run a mile in four minutes and forty seconds? How about 26.2 of them back to back?