Posted: April 30, 2007

Athletics: Vienna’s champion Luke Kibet wants to return next year

At the age of 24 Luke Kibet is still very young for a marathon runner. Nonetheless the Kenyan has already got some credentials. Two years ago he had clocked a personal best of 2:08:52 when coming in third in the Eindhoven Marathon, then he became the winner of the Taipeh Marathon in 2005 and 2006. But the biggest success so far came yesterday in Vienna. In warm weather conditions Luke Kibet won the Vienna City Marathon with 2:10:07.”I would very much like to come back to Vienna next year again”, Luke Kibet said after taking Austria’s biggest and most prestigious road race. But first Luke Kibet will now travel back to Kenya to relax and then start training. He lives with his wife and one child in Eldoret, which is the centre of Kenyan long distance fame. But for preparations for the Vienna Marathon he has trained in Iten, a place where many top runners go to for training. Luke Kibet won the race on Sunday although his training did not go too well. “For a longer time I had stomach problems when doing longer runs. It was getting better, but I could only do proper marathon training for about three weeks”, said Luke Kibet, who had no such problems during the Vienna City Marathon. That and the fact that he and the other Kenyans did not pick up the pace of the pacemakers in the first half of the race indicates that there is much more to come from Luke Kibet in the future. “It remains my goal to run a sub 2:07 marathon”, Luke Kibet said. “Somehow we did not run faster here Sunday. The problem was that we watched each other and noone was going.” In autumn Luke Kibet, who is employed by the Kenyan prisons in Nairobi and has to run for them in national championships, will run his next marathon and then may be he will be back in Vienna in 2008. Next year’s Vienna City Marathon will mark the 25th anniversary of the race. It will take place on 27th April. “It is our aim to draw 30,000 runners for this jubilee edition. And hopefully we will see a much faster race”, said Wolfgang Konrad, the race director of the Vienna City Marathon. For more information please visit: www.vienna-marathon.com. Luke Kibet and Luminita Talpos on Monday morning in a horse-drawn carriage in front of Vienna’s Stephansdom (St. Stephan’s Cathedral). Photo: www.photorun.net