INEOS name venue for Kipchoge record attempt

The historic city of Vienna, Austria, will host Eliud Kipchoge’s attempt to break the last great barrier in modern athletics, the sub two-hour marathon, in the INEOS 1:59 Challenge.

After an extensive worldwide assessment process, The Prater – the famous Viennese park – has been chosen by the INEOS 1:59 Challenge as the venue that will give Kipchoge the optimum conditions to write himself into the history books.

The marathon will be held on a multi-lap, 9.6 kilometre course centred on Hauptallee, the iconic long, straight and tree-lined avenue which runs through the heart of The Prater.

Each lap will feature Kipchoge running two 4.3km out-and-back stretches of Hauptallee with the turning points coming at the Lusthaus and Praterstern roundabouts at either end of the avenue.

The event is due to take place on October 12, with a reserve window of eight days scheduled until October 20, in case of adverse weather conditions.

Kipchoge fell 26 seconds shy of running a sub-2-hour marathon in 2017 during the Nike Breaking-2 project.

Last year, Kipchoge lowered the legal world record by an astonishing 78 seconds when posting 2:01.39 in Berlin and before he ran the second-fastest time in history when winning the 2019 London marathon in 2:02.37.

Although Nike is not spearheading the attempt as it did in Monza, Kipchoge, 34, will again wear their somewhat controversial carbon-insoled Vaporfly shoes that Nike says improve running economy by up to four percent.

-Report by INEOS