Kingchoge is back!

The reigning Olympic marathon champion and sub-two-hour man, Eliud Kipchoge, bounced back from his shock defeat in London last October to win the NN Mission Marathon in a time of 2:04:30 on Sunday morning.

The race, originally scheduled to take place on April 11 in Hamburg, was postponed over Covid-19 restrictions, forcing the organizers to look for an alternative location, finally settling for the, Twente Airport Netherlands. 

This was Kipchoge’s first outing since his surprise loss at the London marathon in October last year where he finished in eighth place, more than five minutes slower than his world record of 2:01:39 and over a minute adrift of Ethiopian winner Shura Kitata.

His training mate, Jonathan Korir finished second in 2:06:4. Korir had joined Kipchoge in the leading pack earlier on in the race. Kipchoge's pace through 10km was 29:15, with the second five km run in 14:21. The pace continued to rise through 15km, with the front runners passing through in 43:46.

At the half-marathon mark, Kipchoge and Korir set a time of 1:01:43, as the first of the two pacemakers dropped out of the race leaving one pace maker.

The world record holder took control of the race after after about one hour and 20 minutes, moving to the front. The final 10km saw Kipchoge lead, as he sought to push the pace and test his form with a little over three months left until the Opening Ceremony of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Game

At 1 hour and 35 minutes, the challenge of Korir finally faded as he dropped away from the front. It left Kipchoge to kick for the finish alone with just a single lap of the circuit left to run.

“It is mission accomplished. The conditions were really good, a bit windy, but I had no complaints. The race was perfect. This was the real test towards Tokyo. It’s good to have a marathon a few months before the Olympics to test my fitness," Kipchoge said

"Sunday, personally, I will be running a very beautiful race. I call it beautiful because we are in tough times during the pandemic. I want to run a beautiful race to show the world that actually we are on a huge, huge transition towards a great future," Kipchoge had said in a pre-race interview. 

The leading contenders in the women’s race were paced by a small group of men, reaching 10km in 34:39 and half way in 1:12:58. Kenya’s Gladys Chesir, Sweden’s Hanna Lindholm and German duo Laura Hottenrott and Katharina Steinruck were all still in contention at this point, but Lindholm started to fade as they embarked on the second half.

Chesir was next to drop back, doing so after about 90 minutes of running, leaving Steinruck and Hottenrott as the lead duo. Steinruck (nee Heinig) began to edge ahead of her domestic rival in the final seven kilometres and the race was finally decided.

Steinruck reached the finish line in 2:25:59, elevating her to sixth on the German all-time list, just three places and 84 seconds adrift of her mother, Katrin Dorre-Heinig, the 1988 Olympic bronze medallist.

Portugal’s Sara Moreira finished strongly to take second place in 2:26:42 with Germany’s Rabea Schoneborn placing third in 2:27:03.