On Friday, at the ExpoDeporte in Valencia, a journalist asked the legendary Kenenisa Bekele (41):
-What advice would you give to Joshua Cheptegei (27) on the eve of his marathon debut?
Bekele, who had once held the universal records of 5,000 and 10,000, and who had then seen how Cheptegei snatched both milestones from him, looked at the interlocutor, and then at Cheptegei, and finally responded:
-Cheptegei will receive his advice on the same Sunday, in the streets of Valencia.
Today is Sunday and the group has passed the half marathon in an astonishing 60m35s, thirteen seconds below the world record partial, and in the lead are the three hares and eight other men, and among them Cheptegei (not Bekele, since he has decided to temporize and gave them half a minute of margin: he crossed in 60m58s), and from there it was war.
The group atomizes, breaks down, and in the lead are Sisay Lemma, Dawit Wolde and Chalu Desso, all of them Ethiopians, men of 2h03m whose names the popular imagination ignores, and the stars of the race, the vaunted Geay, Mutiso, are disfigured and also Cheptegei, the myth that, now, is discovering the disappointments of the marathon.
These are not the references of synthetic, this is not the glamor of a stadium, but the hardness of the streets and their pavement.
Here there is no light flashing on the ring, marking the times of passage, and sometimes the terrain slopes, even slightly as it happens in Valencia, and curves are outlined and the paint on the pavement slips, and the group stretches and It shrinks like an accordion at the refreshment stations, and the athlete does not see the goal, because it is far away, sometimes very far away, and his legs no longer give enough strength.
And you have to contemplate, an hour later, the arrival of Cheptegei, bent over himself, defeated by the distance, the marathon is cruel to the gods, a man cowering at the finish line: Cheptegei barely holding on, and pounces on Marc Roig, the physiotherapist who does everything in the Rift Valley (training partner for talents, physio, driver, recruitment director for international athletes) and who, hand in hand, takes him to the stretcher.
You have to give it serum and massage.
Cheptegei finished 37th, in 2h08m59s.
And ten kilometers earlier, Bekele himself, who finished fourth, overtook him in 2h04m19s, and told us:
-I have had better results, you all know it, but I have not arrived with my best preparation. The lead group was going too fast for me and the second group was too slow. And I am satisfied with my shoes, Anta (Chinese firm that hired you this year), but I hope to have better models in the future.
(...)
When Cheptegei, the track runner who has been Olympic 10,000m champion and will return to the track this coming summer, for example at the Paris 2024 Games, melts, Sisay Lemma grows, a brilliant distance runner in any country, a day laborer in his own, Ethiopia .
Lemma is 33 years old and has a victory in the 2021 London Marathon, but he has never won a world title or an Olympic medal, and before thinking about him, the expert thinks about other contemporary and hypothetically more illustrious Ethiopians, he thinks about himself. Bekele, or in Tola, or in Getachew, or in Leul Gebresilasie.
Lemma has the legs of a footballer and he shakes the tree and the leaves fall, and behind him walk Kibiwott Kandie, who held the world record for the half marathon, and Wolde and Desso, and at km 37 he breaks everything definitively and is already leaving alone, without hares and without a net, and he loses some time, he starts jogging at 2m55s per km, it is no longer the resounding 2m51s of the previous partials, and he misses the world record (2h00m35s of the great Kelvin Kiptum), but no the record of the test: he clocks 2h01m48s (compared to the previous 2h01m53s, also by Kiptum), and takes home an extra 30,000 euros.
Behind, Tariku Novales keeps his promise.
He had said that he would be the first Spaniard to break the 2h06m barrier and execute his mission. He clocks 2h05m48s, he breaks the Spanish record and then he says everything he thinks:
-The hares have failed and I have had to show my face. It is true that we crossed the half marathon under 63m, but then the partials began to fall and I had to take control. And at km 35 I started to suffer and I said to myself: 'Shit, man, you screwed up, showing your face so much', but then everything turned out fine.
And then, when Carlos Arribas (El País) asks him why he wears his sneakers hanging around his neck while serving us, the famous 500-euro Adidas Adi Zero Adios Pro, Novales responds:
-It is a symbol, a token of gratitude to the firm, which has supported me even last year, when things were not going well and I was injured. Because the Spanish Federation doesn't give me anything. I was 21st in the world (last summer in Budapest) and before coming here I had a best time of 2h07m, but nothing, my scholarship is minuscule. And to do athletics I have to sacrifice my time and energy. If I show you my bank account, you'll see it's hilarious. People freak out when I tell them that I don't have help from the federation, but that's how it is.
A few minutes later, Majida Maayuf enters the finish line, another Spaniard who has broken the Spanish record (2h21m27s), a Moroccan who had landed in Vitoria in 2011, and who had obtained Spanish nationality last summer.
-I had been in this country for many years, and I had been thinking for many years that the Spanish record could be mine (I had already clocked 2h21m last year, then as a Moroccan) and preparing for this moment.
(At the close of the day, Juan Roig, president of Mercadona, the main sponsor of the race, proclaims: 'I will give one million euros to the athlete who breaks the world record in Valencia.')
