Eliud Kipchoge successfully completed his superhuman attempt to become the first-ever runner to break the sub two-hour marathon in Austria on Saturday.
The Kenyan icon, 34, had claimed that this quest, dubbed as ‘INEOS 1:59 Challenge’, would be comparable in the annals of human achievement to standing on the moon or scaling Everest for the first time.
And he cemented his name in the history books as battled through the pain and defied the odds to make marathon history.
The reigning Olympic champion, whose record-breaking attempt took place in the Prater park in the Austrian capital of Vienna, crossed the line in 1:59:40.2.
Kipchoge was being guided by rotating seven-man teams of pacemakers, many themselves world class runners, and by an electric pacecar showed the ideal pace the and the position the they should be running.
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The sport's governing body, the IAAF, will not recognise the run as an official record because it is not in open competition and it uses in and out pacemakers.
Kipchoge, who set an official world record of 2:01.39 at the Berlin marathon in September last year, missed out by 26 seconds when he previously attempted to break the two-hour barrier in Monza in May 2017.
