After destroying the world half-marathon record this year, the Ugandan's marathon debut in London on April 27 is much anticipated, writes George Mallett

Jacob Kiplimo’s detonation of the world half-marathon record in Barcelona earlier this year may have shattered any preconceptions about the limits of human endurance but, for one man based outside of the Italian city of Siena, it didn’t come as a great shock.

“For Jacob it’s normal,” says Giuseppe Giambrone with a smile, nursing a flu which is keeping him at bay from the 25 athletes he looks after in the rolling hills of Tuscany. Seven nations are represented under the roof of a 17th century villa built by the powerful Borghese family which has, over the years, also hosted its own kind of athletics royalty.

Said Aouita used it as a launchpad to world and Olympic titles, Ezekiel Kemboi as a studio to dance victorious on the Olympic steeplechase stage twice. But no one has surprised Giambrone in quite the same way as Kiplimo.
Even with his illness, the Italian has an infectious energy that is hard not to enjoy – and you get the sense it has to go somewhere. In 2014, soon after he formalised the Tuscany camp, he began to look to the next generation. Kenya and Ethiopia were, by then, a hive of scout and agent activity, and he took little interest in getting in on the act. Instead, he says he took out a map and looked at the nations on their borders.

Naturally, he drifted westwards and in early 2014 he found himself in Uganda, buoyed somewhat by his experience coaching the latter part of the career of Ugandan 2004 Olympian Wilson Businei.

Renting a motorbike, Uganda's rolling hills reminded Giambrone of home, even if the packed dirt roads wore a different red hue. For a few weeks he took time to learn the landscape of athletics in the country, assisted by compatriot Flavio Pascalato, who had been living there since the turn of the century. It gave Giambrone the confidence to return with purpose in October 2015.

Kapchorwa, the home of Joshua Cheptegei and before him fellow Olympic champion Stephen Kiprotich lays claim to Uganda's heavyweight running stars, but Giambrone decided to look elsewhere, continuing riding to its east.
Like Kapchorwa, the district of Kween rises on the slopes of Mount Elgon, the extinct volcano that forms a natural border between Kenya and Uganda. Common with the Rift Valley eastwards, its various villages have the advantage of altitude and many of its inhabitants share the same Kalenjin tribe from which the majority of Kenya's greatest athletes take their ancestry.

As scouting locations go, it is a logical hunting ground, but devoid of the same structures and focal points to be found over the border. There are some clusters of athletics activity, however, and it helps when one of those involves members of the same family.

Giambrone was introduced to four brothers, each displaying their own individual promise. All shared the same father in Peter Chebet and all displayed significant potential at mountain running, a practice popular in those parts for obvious reasons.

Robert Chemonges was the oldest, having just turned 18 at the time and was leading the charge, already being pushed by a sibling two years his junior. Victor Kiplangat was, in many ways, the star of the quartet and would win the World Mountain Running Title in 2017. Chemonges would claim one of his own the following year. One year younger and still finding his feet was Kiplimo, with the then 13-year-old Oscar Chelimo completing the foursome.

It didn't take long for Giambrone to figure out that he had some talent on his hands – talent that he believed would be best nurtured in the undistracted confines of his San Rocco a Pilli camp. He broached the idea of legally adopting the four and taking them to Siena to continue their development.

It is generally the rule that the top Ugandans have preferred to remain training within their borders. As Cheptegei told me before his testing marathon debut in Valencia: "Uganda always and always". Even Kiprotich didn't stray too far, moving a few hundred miles east to Kaptagat in Kenya.

In an hour's conversation with Giambrone, however, you can see how he could have sold his vision to Chebet, even if the pair's respective lack of English may have led that to being a long and sometimes frustrating conversation. Enough clarity was found to see the three eldest begin a first full year of training in Tuscany in 2016. Chelimo, deemed too young at the time, would arrive one year later.

Many things were different in Italy. There was the attention to science, onsite masseurs, doctors and lactic testing, while the climate is generally a few degrees warmer and without the rains that can so regularly cause chaos to Ugandan training schedules.

However, many similarities remained. The four cooked their own Ugandan style food, specially imported for them – “The only additions pasta and olive oil, this is good for athletes,” says Giambrone – and the terrain for training is similarly sapping, with the ups and downs of the Italian countryside faintly mimicking the foothills of Mount Elgon. The only major difference is a significant drop in altitude for most of the year, their camp being at around 300m above sea level.

You could get Giambrone to write a whole book on what he perceives to be the benefits of a warmer climate over higher altitude but that’s a story for another day.

On their arrival in Siena, Chemonges and Kiplangat, perhaps by virtue of their age, were the more established athletes, but things changed quickly. Still early on into their stay a 15-year-old Kiplimo started to step up in a way Giambrone had never seen before and has never seen since.

A staple for the Italian is a one-hour progressive run, over a testing course which film fans will recognise from the original Gladiator movie. It features smooth rises and gentle falls on compacted trails and light tarmac, flanked by uninterrupted fields of wheat and olive trees.

With temperatures of at least 20 degrees centigrade all year round – and more like 28 in the summer – nothing about the setting or the run itself is easy. Nevertheless, six months into his stay in April 2016, Kiplimo was making increasingly light work of it. Surrounded by athletes many years his senior, he began to drive the pace. The third of the brothers eased away.

With a four per cent gradient and at the end of the hour-long run, Kiplimo ran 3:01 for each of the final two kilometres. Adjusting for the hill, conservative estimates would have that equivalent to a flat 2:45 km, some would even put it closer to 2:40.

As was customary right after he finished, Giambrone took Kiplimo’s lactate measurement. The reading was 1.9 mmol/l. That figure will mean nothing to most people but, in simple terms, it suggested Kilplimo could clear out lactate at that pace quicker than it built up, and that he would be likely to sustain the effort for an hour.

At that pace, provided the conditions were flat, he would have covered more than a half marathon during that time – at the age of 15 and without the help of carbon shoes.

To those who question some of the supposed ages of athletes coming out of East Africa, Giambrone says he got doctors to confirm Kiplimo’s (he is now 24) through x-rays that can determine bone age, and the photos at the time show him as nothing but a baby-faced assassin.

As Nike’s Breaking2 Project was gathering pace, and almost a decade before Kelvin Kiptum threatened to run below two hours in an official marathon, Giambrone says he believed that session showed it would be possible for that teenager to one day cover 26.2 miles in less than 120 minutes.

“I spoke with people and said in the future 1:58, 1:59 in the marathon is possible but Jacob was only 15 years old,” says the Italian.

A few months later, Kiplimo finished third over 10,000m at the World U20 Championships, still three months ahead of his 16th birthday. His time of 27:26.68 would sit seventh on the UK all-time senior’s list, and it’s worth noting that he’s taken almost a minute off it since. At the Rio 2016 Games, he became the youngest ever Olympian from Uganda, finishing 11th of 25 in heat one of the 5000m. What came next – two World Cross Country titles, Olympic and world 10,000m bronze and two Commonwealth gold medals – is more widely known and remembered.

Though Kiplimo still refers to him affectionately as “father”, he left Giambrone in 2019. The Ugandan wanted to return to the country of his birth, while his mentor is adamant he won’t coach remotely.

The Italian says he likes to have complete clarity on how an athlete is training and also be able to ensure they aren’t receiving outside help in the form of performance enhancing drugs. Needless to say he is not casting aspersions on Kiplimo’s current set-up, just espousing his own coaching preference in general.

The half marathon world-record-holder is coached instead by fellow Italian Iacopo Brasi and on April 27 will take to the streets of London. A world-class field, almost exactly nine years to the day when he first convinced Giambrone that he could break the two-hour barrier, Kiplimo may well aim to do it on debut. Not that Giambrone necessarily expects it. “The first marathon 2:01, a second marathon, flat, 1:59!” he chuckles to himself.

When talking about Kiplimo, the unprecedented starts to turn ordinary in a world of science fiction numbers. Kiptum’s world record stands at 2:00:35. Let’s see if Kiplimo can fulfil that road racing potential he demonstrated to his first mentor almost a decade ago.

Running in the family
Jacob Kiplimo and his brothers
Robert Chemonges
2:09:05 Marathon best (Porto, 2018)
2018: World Mountain Running Championships gold
Victor Kiplangat
2:05:09 Marathon Best (Hamburg, 2022)
2017: World Mountain Running Championships – 1st
2022: Commonwealth Games Marathon gold
2023: World Championships Marathon gold
Jacob Kiplimo
World Half Marathon record holder (56:42)
2024: World Cross Country Senior Men’s gold
2023: World Cross Country Senior Men’s gold
2022: World Championships 10,000m bronze;
Commonwealth Games 5000m and 10,000m gold
2021: Olympic Games 10,000m bronze
2020: World Half Marathon Championships gold
2018: World U20 Championships 10,000m silver;
Commonwealth Games 10,000m bronze
2016: World U20 Championships 10,000m silver
Oscar Chelimo
2022: World Championships 5000m bronze
2019: World Cross Country Championships U20 bronze