Why this man is the greatest athlete in history

After winning the men's Olympic marathon astatine Tokyo 2020, Eliud Kipchoge disarmingly remarked that he'd "wanted to trial my fitness" and gauge however helium was "feeling".

With astir 12km of the contention remaining, Kipchoge pulled wide of the pb battalion to transverse the enactment successful a clip of 2 hours, 8 minutes and 38 seconds -- much than a infinitesimal wide of the Netherlands' Abdi Nageeye successful 2nd and Belgium's Bashir Abdi successful third.

By winning Sunday's contention the 36-year-old Kenyan became the 3rd antheral to successfully support an Olympic marathon title.

Kipchoge's triumph completed a marathon treble for Kenya aft Peres Jepchirchir's golden successful the women's contention the time before. He besides follows successful the footsteps of Ethiopia's Abebe Bikila and East Germany's Waldemar Cierpinski arsenic a back-to-back Olympic marathon champion.

"I wanted to make a abstraction (between the different runners) to amusement the satellite that this is simply a beauteous race," Kipchoge aboriginal said, having been each unsocial connected the finishing consecutive erstwhile helium deed the tape, acknowledgment to his utter dominance implicit his closest rivals. "I wanted to amusement that we person anticipation successful the future."

Eliud Kipchoge wins the Olympic marathon - with nary different runners adjacent connected the finishing straight. (Getty)

The marathon and contention walking events were moved northbound of Tokyo to Sapporo successful a bid to flight the vigor of the Japanese capital, but runners inactive battled hard conditions with temperatures adjacent to 30 degrees Celsius and humidity levels astatine 80 per cent. Of the 106 runners that started the race, 30 didn't finish.

"We were each connected the aforesaid frying cookware and that is competition," was Kipchoge's instrumentality connected the blistery upwind -- this aft moving the 5km agelong betwixt the 30-35km markers successful 14:28 to propulsion distant from the tract and found an unassailable lead.

A 2nd marathon golden medal cements Kipchoge's presumption arsenic the top runner ever implicit 42.2km, adding to a resume that includes the satellite grounds of 2:01:39 from 2018 and moving the archetypal ever sub-two-marathon, albeit successful unofficial circumstances, arsenic portion of the INEOS 1:59 Challenge successful 2019.

Kipchoge has present won 13 of the 15 large marathons he's entered since stepping up to the region successful 2013.

"Eliud Kipchoge is the top of each time... successful ANY sport," show manager and writer Steve Magness wrote connected Twitter. "His domination successful a large athletics successful the modern epoch is unprecedented."

Eliud Kipchoge poses with his golden medal astatine the Tokyo Olympics closing ceremony. (Getty)

Silver medallist Nageeye finished successful a clip of 2:09:58, 2 seconds up of his grooming spouse Abdi, who helium encouraged implicit the enactment successful a sprint decorativeness with fourth-placed Lawrence Cherono.

"I said truthful galore times I wanted a apical three, but I ne'er made it. So contiguous I was conscionable focusing. Focus, focus, focus," said Nageeye.

"When I reached 39km I conscionable knew (I would triumph a medal). I was feeling truly casual with 3km to go. I knew I had conscionable 9 minutes to run. It is unbelievable."

*This communicative primitively appeared connected CNN and was reproduced with permission

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