In a town where the red dirt is littered with the detritus of broken dreams, Sabastian Sawe was just another face going nowhere.
It was 2020, three years after Sawe had moved to the Kenyan running mecca of Iten, and he was drifting among a mass of aspiring runners destined never to make the grade. Sawe had long been good, but in the cut-throat world of Kenyan distance running, good is wildly insufficient.
The idea that this was the man who would one day become the first person ever to legally run a marathon in under two hours was inconceivable. But today he did just that – amazingly completing the London Marathon in 1:59.30.
Six years ago, amid pressure from relatives to give up on his sporting goals, Sawe asked his uncle, former Olympic middle-distance runner Abraham Chepkirwok, for help. Through Chepkirwok’s contacts in the sport, a place was secured at a new training group two hours away.
Humility was required. He would rent basic living quarters sharing a room of bunk beds with three others. Training would begin alongside the group’s junior athletes, and visits to his wife and three sons limited to just twice a month. For someone who had grown up in a home with mud walls and no electricity, the hardship was not difficult. Anything to make his dreams a reality.
‘Thank God he didn’t give up,’ said his coach Claudio Berardelli, after Sawe’s extraordinary feat in London. ‘I’m happy that no one noticed him before and eventually, through just a coincidence, he came to me.
Sabastian Sawe became the first person ever to legally run a marathon in under two hours, completing the London Marathon in 1:59.30
The Adidas Pro Evo 3 super shoes that retail for £450 were worn by Sawe and Ethiopian women’s winner Tigst Assefa, who set a women’s-only world record of 2:15.41
‘I’ve done nothing special. What happened today is 90 per cent of Sabastian. Maybe I take five percent. And then I give five percent to all the other people who have contributed. But it’s because of who he is, trust me. He is an exceptional human being. He has such a positive energy, but he’s so humble at the same time.
‘In the 22 years I’ve been coaching in Kenya, I thought I’d seen pretty much everything, but then Sabastian started to show me something which I thought was almost impossible.’
On the sunny Sunday morning that would change his life, the 31-year-old Sawe’s fuel was no more than two slices of honeyed toast and a cup of tea.
A late developer under Berardelli, he had not raced internationally until the age of 26, but the world was on notice of his talents after he had won all of his first three marathons, including in London last year.
He was favourite to successfully defend his title, but victory was no guarantee in a field containing last year’s Ugandan second-placed finisher Jacob Kiplemo and Ethiopia’s Yomif Kejelcha, who would go on to complete the most spectacular debut marathon in history.
When the trio broke clear entering the race’s final quarter, it was evident that the winning time would be quick, but there was little indication of the history that would be made. That only emerged over the final few miles as Sawe steadily, imperceptibly, unfathomably, turned the screw. With every step, his pace increased until all were defeated.
When Eliud Kipchoge broke the two-hour barrier at a carefully cultivated marathon time trial in Vienna in 2019, he had the benefit of a hand-selected course, a wind-shielding car and a group of rotating pacemakers. Sawe had none of those things. This was a proper race – the greatest marathon of all time.
That finishing time of one hour, 59 minutes and 30 seconds will forever be etched in history. Kejelcha, a veteran on the track but a marathon novice, finished in his slipstream, extraordinarily also breaking the previously mythical two-hour barrier in a time of 1:59.41 that is destined to be a bizarre footnote.
So, too, that of Kiplemo, who clocked 2:00.28, which would have been a world record without the extraordinary exploits of the men who finished in front of him.
Described as a ‘silent assassin’ by his agent, Sawe is a man of few words. Afterwards, he put his achievement down to ‘preparation, passion and discipline’, giving a nod to his ‘courage’ in continuing to push an already relentless pace late on.
There was also warranted acknowledgment of the latest Adidas Pro Evo 3 super shoes that retail for £450 and were worn by Sawe, Kejelcha and Ethiopian women’s winner Tigst Assefa, who set a women’s-only world record of 2:15.41.
Sawe storms to his victory in front of thousands of supporters lining the streets of London
Kenyan fans celebrate Sawe’s victory in the capital
‘I have shown nothing is not possible,’ said Sawe. ‘Everything is possible. It’s a matter of time. I think this is something not to be forgotten. It’s something to remain in my mind forever.’
Skepticism is, of course, expected in a sport that has been burned too many times by those whose extraordinary feats have been aided by nefarious means. More than 140 of Sawe’s Kenyan compatriots have been suspended by the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU) for doping offences – almost double the next highest offending country, Russia. Berardelli has trained a number of those banned athletes.
In a bid to stave off understandable doubts, Sawe’s team last year asked the AIU to drug test him as much as possible, with his Adidas sponsors even giving the anti-doping body $50,000 per year solely for use on additional testing for the now-world record holder.
In the two months before last September’s Berlin Marathon, Sawe was tested 25 times – a mixture of blood and urine samples, sometimes taken multiple times per day. The high testing frequency continued before London.
‘Anywhere he went, he would run,’ Sawe’s mother once said of her son’s childhood days. The boy who would become a running immortal.
