“Kenyan Athlete Eliud Kipchoge Wins 2023 Princess of Asturias Award for Sports”

the kenyan athlete Eliud Kipchogetwo-time Olympic marathon champion, was honored this Thursday with the Princess of Asturias Award for Sports 2023to which twenty-four candidates from eleven countries aspired.

Born on November 5, 1984 in Nandi County, Kenya, he won the gold medal in the marathon in the Olympic Games Rio 2016 y Tokio 2020and also in the 5,000 meter test he obtained the silver in Beijing 2008 and the bronze in Athens 2004.

Kipchoge owns two medals in World Championships -gold in 2003 and silver in 2007- and a bronze in the Indoor World Cup in 2006; she had ten major marathon victories and in 2022 she set a new marathon world record with a time of 2 hours, 1 minute and 9 seconds.

Kipchoge is the fourth African athlete to win the Princess of Asturias Award for Sports throughout the award’s history. Before him they won the Algerian Hassiba Boulmerca (1500 meters), the Moroccan Hisham El Guerrouj (1,500 meters and 5,000 meters) and the Ethiopian Haile Brushed sauce (5,000 meters, 10,000 meters and marathon).

All of them are athletes and theirs is the discipline that has historically been awarded the most since the beginning of the awards. When it was created in 1987, the person who received the award was Sebastian Coetoday president of World Athletics. In addition to those already mentioned, Carl Lewis (1996) o Yelena Isinbayeva (2009).

[Claus, el carismático aguador detrás de los dos récords de Eliud Kipchoge en el Maratón de Berlín]

The jury of the 2023 Princess of Asturias Award for Sports, chaired by the swimmer Teresa pear treeshas valued the figure of Kipchoge as “a reference in world athletics” and “the best marathon runner of all time”.

The jury has unanimously decided to award this award to the “only man in history who has managed to lose two hours in the 42.195 kilometres”. There were another 23 candidacies, with an international presence of faces such as Roger Federer o Simone Biles. At the national level, they were proposed Marc marquez, Carolina Marin y Sandra Sánchezamong others.

In addition to his successes as an athlete, the minutes of the jury read this afternoon in Oviedohighlighted that Kipchoge carries out “important social work through the foundation that bears his name, which is dedicated to facilitating access to early childhood education and protecting the environment.”

The athlete’s candidacy was proposed by the president of the Vetusta University of Oviedo Triathlon club, David Gonzalez Alonso. Part of the jury are athletes like Feliciano López o Samuel Sánchez and journalists like Juan Ignacio Gallardo o Vicente Jimenezdirectors of BRAND y ASrespectively.

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