Nine weeks is a long-time in marathon running. Kaan Kigen Özbilen knows that better than most.
Mike, as he’s known to family and friends, is in a bullish mood. At the age of 37, the Kenyan-born Turkish international is in the form of his life.
Earlier in the day Kigen has helped marshal his ten-strong group through five sets of 2km, 1km repeats. Each tapped out without variance.
5:52, 2:50.
Two days later he will finish the final 5km of a 40km long run at over 2200m altitude in a comfortable 14:50.
On his shoulder, the until recently indomitable stride of the marathon’s greatest exponent, Eliud Kipchoge.
Behind him unable to keep the pace that day, two different world champions.
The 2023 World Championships is 63 days away.
Kigen, however, has been here before.
In 2021, in the weeks preceding the Tokyo Olympics, his coach Patrick Sang had boldly claimed that the Olympic gold and silver could both come from his Global Sports Communications (GSC) Camp.
Kipchoge was in the midst of a sequence that had seen him lose one race in 12 marathons. And matching him step by step his unheralded lieutenant, 2:04:16 man and European record holder Kigen.
Three weeks to go, anticipation building Kigen laments one of the final hard runs before the slowdown to a taper:
“That was my bad bad day. I still remember we went for a 40km long run but the last 2km I was feeling a lot of pain.”
Kigen’s patellar tendon had a problem. As he limped to the end, his knee tightened some more.
Shortly after, even walking was difficult and a few days later the Olympic dream was over.
As Kipchoge defended his title, chased home by a different GSC man in Abdi Nageeye, Kigen was sat over 11,000km away at home with his four children in Eldoret.
Two years later, bitterness would be easy for Kigen to find but not a morsel exudes from him.
Kigen’s association with running, he is keen to stress, does not come from some tired trope of needing to escape poverty.
His parents are both involved in business and were able to pay for his education. Everything, as he describes, was “perfect”.
Running for Kigen, that now 20-year-old pursuit, instead hails from seeing just how far he can take his talents.
In the final year of school Kigen had told himself:
“I decided let me try. Let me try to run.”
Trying, in 2004, had seen him enter the world of the PACE Sports Management Group, a training group led by Ricky Simms (now known as the agent of Fred Kerley, Mo Farah and Usain Bolt).
His new training partners were Benjamin Limo and Micah Kogo. Ironically it would be Limo who would dethrone Kipchoge at the 2005 World Championships, taking 5000m gold.
Kogo in 2008 would win Olympic bronze over 10,000m.
It was some world-class early schooling.
Indeed it would lead to some highly promising results, edged out by a then dominant Mo Farah in the 2014 Great North Run, less than a second behind a man he’d shared plenty of training miles with.
In 2015 Kigen’s journey would take him to the border of Europe and Asia, switching allegiances to Turkey:
“I had a close friend who was normally coming to Kenya and then we met and discussed and I told him why don’t I change nationality? Because I wanted my future, my children also maybe to go to study in Europe.”
His four children are now all Turkish citizens and Kaan Kigen Özbilen, as he has become, has represented the country with distinction.
European Half silver in Barcelona in 2016, European Cross-Country gold in 2017.
By most standards the 37-year-old has enjoyed an incredibly fruitful career.
Yet sitting on a bench in the GSC camp, tucked round the corner from the flashing lights and multiple camera set up of an Al Jazeera crew preparing to interview Eliud you get the sense of a man with unfinished business.
Affronted with the notion that on his day he can’t be the best of them all, he is a man driven by a confidence that will not be wilted by a complacency almost inevitable in a 20 year career at the top.
“My whole life I admired this camp.”
The coaching of Patrick Sang, the calibre of his now-teammates and the unfettered and non negotiable pursuit of excellence.
Since 2020 this camp has been his home six days a week. Every day four different world or Olympic champions surround him. Their belief, their example and indeed their mortality a constant reminder that even the best will have their bad days.
A genuine dream for an athlete who trained only 6km away for most of his career, it is only in the later half of his 30s that Kigen has the opportunity to learn from those he regards as the very best.
What has he found out so far?
Crossing that line to world and Olympic glory may be closer than he thought.
On 27th August Kigen hopes to head to Budapest, healthy and ready to try once more, fueled by the knowledge that better days await.
If it happens to be that Sunday, he may just be a world champion.
Featured image and all supplied by Vincent Riemersma/NN Running Team
