Eliud Kipchoge rebounded to win a specially held marathon at an airport, six months after the worst marathon of his unmatched career.
Kipchoge clocked 2:04:30 at Twente Airport in the Netherlands in an elite-only race that lacked the Kenyan’s top rivals on Sunday.
“It is mission accomplished,” Kipchoge said. “The race was really perfect. The NN Mission Marathon was a real test before Tokyo. It was so good a marathon happened a few months before the Olympics to test our fitness.”
The time is well off Kipchoge’s world record of 2:01:39 from the 2018 Berlin Marathon, and it’s the ninth-best time of his career.