Eliud Kipchoge

Eliud Kipchoge grew up in Kapsisiywa, a village in Kenya's Nandi hills, the youngest of four children raised by their mother, a teacher. He ran the several kilometres to school each day and after leaving school collected milk from neighbours to sell in the market. His neighbour Patrick Sang, an Olympic medallist, agreed to coach him in 2001 and has done so ever since.

At 18 he beat two of the greatest runners in history, Hicham El Guerrouj and Kenenisa Bekele, to win the world 5000 metres title. He won Olympic medals on the track in 2004 and 2008 but never gold, and in 2012 he failed to make the Kenyan team at all. At 27 it looked as though his best years were behind him.

He moved to the marathon instead. It was his second race at the distance, in Berlin in 2013, before he lost one, and over the following decade he won almost every marathon he entered, took Olympic gold in Rio and Tokyo, and twice broke the world record. In October 2019, in a specially staged run in Vienna with rotating pacemakers, he covered the distance in 1 hour 59 minutes 40 seconds, the first person under two hours, although it did not count as an official record.

Through all this he has lived for most of each year in a simple training camp in Kaptagat, sharing chores, cleaning toilets, and going to bed at nine.