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After breaking his own world record, Eliud Kipchoge takes aim at winning all six World Marathon Majors

When you’ve pushed the boundaries of human achievement as far as Eliud Kipchoge, there comes a time when you have to start inventing milestones. The Kenyan marathoner is already the sport’s world record holder. He’s also the only human ever to run 26.2 miles in less than two hours, a feat achieved in a non-race environment.

Yet there are also milestones that Kipchoge hasn’t reached. No one has won all six of the world’s major marathons. No one has won three gold medals in a row at the Olympics in the marathon.

In the next 16 months, both of those unthinkable feats are within Kipchoge’s grasp. And that explains why, on Monday, the 38-year-old will toe the line at the Boston Marathon for the first time in his decorated career.

Boston gives Kipchoge a shot at adding to his list of major marathon wins. And by competing on Boston’s brutal hills—and possibly in New York City later this year—he can test his readiness for the 2024 Paris Olympics, whose marathon course features the most elevation ever.

“He wants to write history, of course,” said Jos Hermens, founder of the NN Running Team with which Kipchoge trains. “If he can do it with course records that would be even more amazing.”

Kipchoge already has 10 major marathon wins to his name: four in Berlin, four in London, plus Chicago in 2014 and Tokyo in 2022. He holds the course records everywhere, save the Windy City. He’s twice broken the world record in Berlin, most recently in September 2022 when he crossed the finish line in 2:01:09. His average pace was a mind-blowing 4 minutes and 37 seconds per mile.

“I tell people that if you want to push your limits, come to Berlin,” Kipchoge said after the 2022 race. “I have shown the way to many athletes, to the next generation, that one day a human being will run under two hours in a normal course.”

Kipchoge has accomplished all of these time-bending feats amid a torrent of falling records in long-distance running that coincided with the arrival of Nike’s so-called “super shoes.” The controversial footwear features a thick, cushy midsole and a built-in carbon-fiber plate designed to improve runners’ economy of movement.

Another facet of his blazing times has been the races he has chosen. Berlin is favorable to fast times because the course is pancake flat, with a total elevation gain of 241 feet. The late September calendar slot usually ensures favorable weather conditions.

But running a marathon in the crisp German autumn is nothing like braving Boston in April. The race in Beantown isn’t for the faint of heart—or quadriceps.

The marathon has a downhill pitch from the start in Hopkinton, Mass., through mile 16. Then come the Newton Hills, four steep climbs culminating in “Heartbreak Hill,” the incline named for its tendency to derail runners’ races. The final climb entails roughly 90 feet of elevation over about half a mile—which feels like a lot more than it is after 20 miles of pounding.

As tough as the uphills are, nothing shreds a marathoner’s legs like running downhill. It’s why Boston, with its 815 feet of elevation gain and 1,275 feet of loss, is widely considered to be the hardest of the six major marathons.

There is another, more unpredictable, factor: the mercurial Northeast weather. Des Linden famously endured temperatures in the 30s, sheets of freezing rain and 25-mile-per-hour gusts of wind en route to winning in 2018. As of Friday, the forecast for Monday looks milder: temperatures ranging from the high 40s to mid 50s with a 60% chance of rain in the afternoon.

The last time Kipchoge raced in less-than-ideal weather was at the pandemic-modified London Marathon in October 2020. Temperatures that day hovered around 48 degrees as elite athletes completed nearly 20 laps of a circuit course in steady rain. He placed eighth, his worst finish ever, and said after the race that he was thrown off when one of his ears became waterlogged.

An unwillingness to gamble on adverse Northeastern precipitation wasn’t the thing keeping Kipchoge from coming to Boston, however. Hermens said that the NN Running Team favors a more conservative approach to racing with its athletes. Rarely does Hermens ask athletes to race more than two marathons in a calendar year—with less than a week between Boston and London, elite runners must choose between the races. Rarely does he push athletes toward hilly courses either.

“If you’re a little bit stiffer, all the pounding you get can work against you,” Hermens said. “Dangerous is too big of a word,” he added, but the risks outweighed the rewards for Kipchoge while he was chasing gold medals and world records.

There was also a financial factor. Mary Kate Shea, the longtime overseer of recruitment of professional athletes for the Boston Marathon, “always came with offers and was always trying to schmooze him up” to get Kipchoge to run Boston, Hermens said. The NN Running Team founder wouldn’t say what Kipchoge’s appearance fee is for this year’s Boston Marathon, but noted that the Boston Athletic Association tends to operate on a tighter budget than London race organizers.

“It was a very fair offer [from the B.A.A.], but London is always a little bit more,” Hermens said. “It is well known that London is the best payday for athletes.”

The coffers of the B.A.A. may soon increase: in 2024, Bank of America will take over from John Hancock as the presenting partner of the race. According to a person familiar with the deal, Bank of America is making a larger financial commitment than its predecessor.

A spokesperson from the B.A.A. declined to comment on the financial details of their partnerships.

Perhaps the biggest thing pulling Kipchoge toward Boston in 2023 is one of the things that kept him away before: the notorious Newton Hills. If he wants to become the first three-time marathon medalist in history, Kipchoge will need to conquer an Olympic marathon course that is très vallonnés. True to French form, the course in Paris pays homage to a protest march undertaken by women peasants in 1789 and stretches from the Hotel de Ville in Paris to Château de Versailles and back. That route covers roughly 1,430 feet of elevation gain—six times more climbing than Berlin and nearly twice as much as Boston.

Every major marathon that Kipchoge has won, including those at the past two Summer Olympics, features a flat course. This isn’t to say that Kipchoge is incapable of winning on a more technical marathon—He trains in the highlands of Kenya’s Rift Valley on trails nicknamed “Boston” for their rolling hills. It’s just that he has never tried.

“Of course it is good for him to adjust a little bit more to hilly courses,” Hermens said, adding that “a gold medal is priority number one” for Kipchoge.

Depending on how Kipchoge fares on Monday morning, he might take one more crack at a hilly course in the fall should he choose to race the New York City Marathon. Hermens wouldn’t confirm Kipchoge’s fall racing plans, but suggested that Berlin, or a course-record-setting attempt at Chicago are on the table. So is New York, the last major on Kipchoge’s absurd bucket list.

“I don’t even want to participate in the six World Marathon Majors,” Kipchoge told a newspaper in Kenya last year. “I want to participate and win all the six.”