2023-12-03 07:39:16
Paris (AFP) – He is “still in love with the 10,000 meters” but wanted a “new adventure”: at 27 years old and eight months before the Games, Ugandan Joshua Cheptegei is lining up on Sunday for the first time in a marathon, in Valencia in Spain, without forgetting his Olympic ambitions on the track.
Published on: 03/12/2023 – 08:39
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Olympic champion in the 5,000 meters, three-time reigning world champion in the 10,000 meters, world record holder at these two distances… Joshua Cheptegei has won almost everything on the track and had been thinking for a while regarding testing himself on the longer distance, a transition not unusual for long-distance runners.
“Next year, it will be ten years that I have been running at the international level, so moving on to the marathon is like a new adventure,” he explained to a handful of journalists.
For his discovery of distance, Cheptegei naturally turned to Valencia, the “Ciudad del Running” renowned for its fast races which have often smiled on him in the past.
It is in the streets that he will walk on Sunday that in 2019 he had broken the world record for 10 kilometers on the road, which the Kenyan Rhonex Kipruto had seized a few weeks later, still in Valencia, since provisionally suspended for doping.
It was also there that three years ago he shattered the 10,000 meter world record that running legend Kenenisa Bekele had held for 15 years – at the start on Sunday.
Few kilometers
Ugandan Joshua Cheptegei in the 10,000 m on July 22, 2023 in Eugene, Oregon © JONATHAN FERREY / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP/Archives
So “when we had to choose where to run (the marathon), Valencia was the best choice. We don’t want to start in a place we don’t know,” says Cheptegei, who trains daily in Kapchorwa, his town. native to eastern Uganda.
After the world championships in Budapest in August (gold over 10,000 meters) and a few weeks of rest, the young Ugandan tackled his first marathon preparation. “I learned a lot, especially regarding nutrition: you have to know how to hydrate, know what the body needs to run longer and longer,” he lists.
We also had to cover more kilometers than usual and discover long outings. With “between 140 and 160 kilometers per week”, Cheptegei remains far from the distances covered by the stars of the discipline, who happily exceed 200 kilometers per week, or even 300 kilometers for the new Kenyan world record holder Kelvin Kiptum.
“Long outings were tiring for me but now I’m learning to accept that it will be part of my life in the future,” explains the man who now wants to devote himself to road racing.
“Still in love” with the 10,000
But Cheptegei will not hang up his spikes before the Paris Games, where he wants to glean the Olympic title he lacks over 10,000 meters. “I’m almost done with the track but I’m not done yet,” he says. “I am still in love with the 10,000 meters so I want to go to Paris and win” over the 25 laps of the track.
He does not rule out a demanding 10,000-marathon double at the Games but wants to wait for Valencia before deciding.
“It’s a new distance, I’m still learning,” repeats the man who has benefited from the advice of the masters of the discipline: his idols Eliud Kipchoge, former world record holder, and Stephen Kiprotich, Ugandan marathon star in the early 2010s.
“It’s super important that I have fun, and also that I see what happens following 35 kilometers,” he says, refusing the comparison with Kelvin Kiptum, who made his impressive debut over the distance in Valencia last year.
After a season marked by crazy records for the men (02:00:35 by Kiptum) as well as the women (2h11:53 by Tigst Assefa), Cheptegei affirms that he is not “looking to set a fast time”.
Ugandan Joshua Cheptegei crosses the finish line of the 10,000 m of the World Championships on August 20, 2023 in Budapest © Jewel SAMAD / AFP/Archives
“02:03, 02:04…”, he still mentions to complete the 42.195 kilometers. “The ideal would be to get on the podium.”
© 2023 AFP
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