“Trust is like cement” – Eliud Kipchoge’s special relationship with Patrick Sang

A few miles from the Ugandan border, a new century has dawned, in more sense than one.

Kapsisiywa County sits south-west of the regional centre of Eldoret, in neighbouring Nandi County and is illuminated with three colours.

Dense verdant green, there can be few better places in the world to grow crops. A vivid blue sky and the deep red of mile after mile of Kenyan road.

A 16-year-old is living out his final days of anonymity.

Gliding along the compacted dirt, Eliud Kipchoge is a boy full of hopes and dreams, but like any first taking up the sport, one with more questions than answers.

In less kind terms, Eliud doesn’t quite know what he is doing.

But he knows someone that does.

Patrick Sang is 20 years Eliud’s senior and has come to a crossroads in his career.

Years of competing successfully for world and Olympic medals over the steeples are over and a step up to the marathon hasn’t led to quite the success he might have liked. Retirement looms large.

Open to coaching and less than a mile from Eliud’s home, Patrick takes on one of his first students.

As he recalls to us 22 years later, he puts it simply:

“It was a journey in developing trust.”

The pair’s first meetings were simple. Eliud would receive a program for 10 days, on the 11th resting before coming back on the 12th day for a new cycle.

In Sang he saw a world-class athlete and in Eliud, Sang saw a boy who would carry out what he asked religiously. Trust steadily formed and success came quickly.

Fifth in the Junior race at the 2002 World Cross Country Championships, he upgraded it to gold just a year later.

Five months later he was the world 5000m champion. At 18 the youngest in history.

Sometime along the way Eliud lost sight of those 10-day plans.

“From that time to today Eliud has never asked for a program. He comes to training to train.”

Sang recalls, noting how nowadays the double Olympic champion prefers to find out his session on the day.

He sees no need in debating plans or overanalysing workouts seeing instead the power of trust in an athlete/coach relationship. Typically philosophical Eliud says:

“I treat trust as one of the great values for us as human beings. It is like cement which can help two people be together. Between me and Patrick there is huge trust. I trust him. He has performed well and I trust his thoughts.”

It would be easy to contest that it’s easy to trust a coach when you receive such success so young. Indeed in the eyes of both athlete and mentor, their progression has been nothing but a straight line up. Yet uncontestably there have been trickier times along the way.

As Eliud himself admits:

“We competed with Kenenisa (Bekele) in track and field very well and I only beat him once in 2003. Olympics 2004 we competed, 2005 World Championships, World Indoors 2006 in Russia, Olympics in Beijing. It was everywhere and I didn’t get the chance to be number one. That’s the rivalry we had in track.”

Olympic 5000m bronze in 2004, silver in 2008 when Bekele’s dominance subsided another took his place. Eliud was fifth in the 2009 World Championship 5000m, and as Mo Farah won in 2011 he had slipped further to seventh.

Persistent hamstring problems in 2012 saw Eliud not even make the plane for the London Olympics and by the time of his marathon debut in 2013 he had gone five years without a global medal.

During tricky periods Sang says it is common for struggling athletes to look elsewhere for advice. Why am I not realising what I see as my potential, why do I struggle when others don’t?

Eliud saw no-one to blame.

The answer to why reveals itself over the course of our conversation. Trust is never too far from humility.

Sitting in the Global Sports Communication camp, fresh off back-to-back TV interviews with CNN and Al Jazeera, Eliud sits for his next assignment.

Hollywood has made a film about him. In a few weeks time Spain will honour him with their highest sporting honour, the Princess of Asturias Award. The journalist to my left labels him a superstar. Legend, icon, superlatives surround him.

Yet Eliud is excited about a recent arrival at the camp. A week before a group of rally drivers have visited. Amongst them Ott Tänak, the 2019 Rally World Champion, and fellow driver Pierre-Louis Loubet.

“We were with them for two and a half hours and they were happy to be here. We are trying to be more close to those who are really superstars.”

With five times the social media following of the pair combined does Eliud not regard himself as a superstar too? A semi-awkward shuffle in his seat and a pointed response.

“I think they are superstars.”

Professing humility is something we are all capable of but when lived fully it can become a superpower.

It encourages personal accountability and the idea that greater things can be achieved together. It rationalises moments that would usually be racked with emotion. And it means that two Olympic titles later Eliud’s name still appears on the rota to clean the camp toilets.

The idea that faith in Patrick might have wavered seems almost an affront to Eliud. Weakness, defeat, it’s all part of the process:

“The struggles actually are good in life especially in sport because you realise that any struggle is not permanent. If you struggle then treat it in a good way and you’ll actually come back. So although 2012 was my turning point going from the track to the road I can say the struggles which I had were actually translated to the road race.”

Ten years on from that debut in Hamburg, for only the third time in his career at the marathon Eliud stands as a man fresh from defeat.

Reluctant to say he will break the world record at Berlin, he leaves the mark of someone who realises the days are counting till he toes the line no more.

But that is precisely why you would be brave to bet against him.

An athlete who admits that Bekele bettered him on the track, that his back-to-back Olympic golds surprised him, he exudes the impression that despite the titles, despite the accolades he still believes he has plenty left to learn.

38-years-old, his trust in Patrick Sang total, that 16-year-old boy is not far away.