Her standard deviation was over eight minutes. Even at a shorter distance-which should mean there’s less variation-her mean and median finish times varied by three minutes. She crunched the numbers for the 28 half marathons she’s run over the past 19 years. Kovacs, who describes herself as a data-obsessed recreational runner on a quest to qualify for Boston, wanted to see how Kipchoge’s consistency stacked up to hers. He’s only once finished a marathon off the podium, and in all but two of his attempts, he’s come out on top.Īnother indication of his consistency is his standard deviation, meaning how much each value varies from the mean finish time. Then there’s just how often he lands on the podium. That’s one clue that all the numbers are clustered together. Take all of Kipchoge’s marathon finish times over the past nine years: The mean-or average-finish time (2:04:25:18) is almost exactly the same as the median-or middle-finish time (2:04:10:99). When you look at Kipchoge’s race times, what really emerges, says Melissa Kovacs, PhD, a statistician and runner, is his consistency. The greatest show on earth? Says who? The country’s best yogurt? Using what metric? We wanted to understand that line between great and greatness-both what defines it statistically and creates it physically. Superlatives unanchored by context tend to just float toward hyperbole. Slapping GOAT on every athlete having a moment isn’t particularly scientific-or accurate. It’s why he was chosen to break the two-hour barrier-and why he pulled it off.

But it’s in that sliver of seconds where Kipchoge becomes a legend.

His 2:01:41 from Berlin 2019 is not quite 0.4 percent slower-just 32 seconds-than Kipchoge’s official 2:01:09 world record. In a Kipchoge-less world (perish the thought), we could be writing here about the world’s second fastest marathoner ever, Kenenisa Bekele. It’s not like Kipchoge is the only fast marathoner on the planet. Get the Mag Runner's World Courtesy NN Running Team This article appears in Issue 3 / 2023 of Runner’s World.

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