Even a species of eight billion has outliers, and on the night of Feb. 11, 2024, one of them was at the wheel of a Toyota Premio on Eldoret-Eldama Ravine Road in Kenya, heading toward Eldama Ravine. Kelvin Kiptum had big plans, for himself and for the human race. He intended to break the two-hour barrier in the marathon, and he was so confident that he had already named the time and place: April 14 of this year, at the Rotterdam Marathon.
It was a striking statement, in part because it was so believable. The 24-year-old Kiptum was the latest in a line of extraordinary distance runners from Kenya, a country that has taken an ancient race and made it its own. Last October, he ran the Chicago Marathon in a time of 2:00:35, breaking fellow Kenyan Eliud Kipchoge’s world record by 34 seconds. With its flat course, the Rotterdam race is conducive to fast times. If Kiptum could shave 36 seconds off his own record there, his time and his legacy would both begin with a 1.
