Kenyan marathon runner Eliud Kipchoge has won the Princess of Asturias Award for Sports, the foundation that awards the prizes announced on Thursday.
Kipchoge, 38, won Olympic gold in his field at Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020 and was world champion in the 5,000m in 2003, a distance in which he has won two other Olympic medals, silver and bronze.
The jury said the long-distance runner is “considered a legend of world athletics, as well as the best marathon runner of all time.”
The Princess of Asturias Foundation highlighted that she is known as a “philosopher” for her strategy and concentration when competing. Kipchoge has won 10 grand marathons, including London and Berlin, where he finished on the podium four times each.
He is the reigning Olympic marathon champion and holds the world record for the discipline with a time of 2:01:09, which he set last year in Berlin. At that time, he himself reduced the record made in 2018 in this competition by 30 seconds.
Kipchoge is the only athlete in history to have run the 42.195 km marathon in less than two hours, although the time of 1:59:40 achieved in Vienna in 2019 is not officially recognized as he had an external There was help and testing. was organized to achieve the feat.
The prize, which carries an endowment of 50,000 euros ($55,000), is one of eight that the Princess of Asturias Foundation distributes annually in categories such as art, communication, science or literature.
The Foundation and the Refugee Olympic Team won the award last year. They share the winners’ list with Paralympic swimmer Teresa Perales, rally driver Carlos Sainz, skier Lindsey Vonn or basketball players Pau and Marc Gasol.
The award ceremony is held in October in Oviedo, northern Spain.
