The story of how a coach from Scotland helped set Kenya's Sabastian Sawe on a path toward the top of the marathon world

It’s the kind of moment that makes it all worthwhile and can keep a coach motivated for months. Colin Thomas was stood on the roadside behind a barrier, roughly 6km from the finish line of the London Marathon, and on the lookout for some familiar faces. He was there to support some of the athletes he mentors, as well as friends who were taking to the streets to raise money for charity. But one particular participant that the Scot has worked with was putting together the run of his life.

As he peered down the road for signs of the oncoming elite field, Thomas was frustratingly short of information. He had seen Sabastian Sawe positioned within the lead group at the halfway mark but, with the tracking app not working as quickly as he would like, he was completely unaware of the bold and decisive move the Kenyan had made at 30km.

As the other members of the group had reached for their water bottles, Sawe opted to downshift and hit the accelerator, rapidly establishing a sizeable lead as his illustrious rivals struggled to react.

By the time he was about to come flying past Thomas, that lead had grown and the 30-year-old was closing in on the biggest win of his career, following up his victorious marathon debut in Valencia last December with a run of 2:02:27 that is the second-quickest ever recorded over the London course.

“When he came past, I was screaming at him,” says Thomas. “Then I was waiting to see who was coming next and, of course, by that point, he was nearly a minute ahead.

“Then [Jacob] Kilpimo came past and he’s a class runner with a really fast finish so I was thinking: ‘Hopefully, Sabastian can hang on and go for the win’. I was still trying to refresh the app and, eventually, I found out he’d won. I was so happy for him.”

Thomas’ mind began drifting back to the first time he had met Sawe, in Kenya, in 2018.

“I've been going to Kenya regularly since 2015 and working with a coach called John Ewoi,” he continues. “He’s an ex-professional athlete and I started working alongside him with some groups of young, up and coming athletes.

“In 2018, before I was going out there, John contacted me and said: ‘I've hand-picked some young athletes who I think are really, really great’. Sabastian was part of that group.”

However, they were short of resources and Thomas was tasked with sourcing some much-needed kit. He works with a few Glasgow-based athletics clubs and it was largely through donations from the West End Road Runners that he was able to amass a considerable amount of unwanted running gear. The haul was duly packaged up and dispatched to coincide with his arrival in Iten but the process of being reunited with the cargo was not entirely straightforward.

“In typical Kenyan style, I got bribed to get the kit from the post office,” grins Thomas, who was forced to stump up 5000 Kenyan shillings (around £30) to complete the collection.

“I got the boxes and took them over to John and the group,” he adds. “We put them up in what is essentially a room but they would call it a house. The toilet’s just a hole in the back garden, and there's a shared tap between maybe 10 houses, so maybe 40 or 50 people sharing one water tap, which is relatively normal out there.

“We had eight athletes with four single mattresses for them to sleep on, so they were two to a single mattress. We bought sacks of rice and sacks of cornflour, because they use the cornflour to make the ugali that they like to eat. We fed them up on high carbs and started training them.”

Ewoi and Thomas’ self-funded project continued for the next two years, until the pandemic brought a halt to their plans in 2020.

“When lockdown came in, our mini training camp kind of fell apart,” recalls Thomas. “During that time, I'd been training them for certain sessions and in running technique.”

He continues: “[After the break-up of the project] I heard that Sabastian had been picked up by one of the big management companies and was getting sponsorship, which was great. I was super happy for him, because the plan for our little programme had been to give the athletes opportunities.

“But I didn't really hear much more about it until he won the Peachtree 10km in America [last year]. That's when I took notice and thought: ‘Wow, he's turned into a really good runner’.”

But there was more to come.

“There are a couple of athletes from the [Kenya] group that I still keep in touch with and one of them messaged me and said: ‘Watch out for Sabastian at the Valencia Marathon’,” says Thomas. “I thought: ‘I’ll watch it and see how he gets on’, not really expecting him to win it [in the way he did].”

Sawe not only won but he did so in the fastest marathon time of 2024, and the fifth-fastest in history, with 2:02:05.

“I thought: ‘He hasn’t just become a really good runner, he's going to be one of the best in the world!’, so obviously I took a much closer interest.”

As London approached, much of the attention around the men’s elite contenders fell on the likes of Kiplimo, who had just obliterated the half marathon world record, and the return of marathon master Eliud Kipchoge. Thomas was very much aware, though, that his former charge had a chance.

“Ahead of London, I’d heard Sabastian was in really good shape,” he says. “I was already planning to go [to support friends and athletes] but I thought I had to really go now. Whenever somebody asked me: ‘Who's going to win the London marathon?’ I always said:  ‘There’s this guy, Sabastian. He's going to win’.”

As Sawe flashed by with 6km to go, then, being able to watch that prophecy coming true in the flesh made the occasion all the more special for Thomas, who soon found himself as the centre of attention amongst the watching crowds.

“I was standing with a railing in front of me, and there was a woman behind me who asked: ‘Are you going to move soon? I’d like to get to the front to see my daughter coming past?’. And I was like: ‘I've just got a few more people to come past and then I'll let you in’. Then she asked: ‘Are you here to see anyone in particular? And I said: ‘Actually, I used to train the guy that's winning it’.

“She started telling people and I was getting a lump in my throat, trying to hold back the tears. It ended up that all these strangers were wanting to talk to me, and I was showing them pictures on my phone of me and Sabastian back in the day. It was such a buzz, and I got such a rush from it.”

The highlight of the whole weekend arrived during the following morning, however, just as the dust was starting to fully settle.

“I was able to meet up with Sabastian,” says Thomas. “It was a really nice moment. We had a nice little catch-up and congratulations moment, and he said: ‘Thanks for your help. You started this off and got me into this’.

“That was really great because [the athletes are] not all like that. They sometimes get what they can out of us, and then you get left behind. But we were looking at old pictures from the training camps. I've got a picture of the guys just sitting on the floor in the room they were living in at the time, and we were having a good laugh about it, like: ‘Do you remember this? This is what we used to do!’.

“[He did remember] and it was great. You could just see the kind of satisfaction in his eyes of all that hard work coming to fruition. He's gone from having nothing to now being wealthy back in Kenya.”

The spotlight will now follow Sawe, whose days of going under the marathon running radar appear to be firmly behind him now. Getting used to that will be a challenge for a man who does not seek attention.

“When I knew him he was just so humble, down to earth and just showed a lot of gratitude. He was obviously very, very keen to do well, very, very dedicated, very, very disciplined at that point,” says Thomas. “Sabastian was always quite a quiet guy in the group. He never really wanted to lead a rep, but was always happy to be sitting in second. He just didn't want to be in the limelight and is a shy lad. That’s just his personality but it’s quite unusual for these Kenyan athletes.

“Quite often they're in your face, asking for stuff and wanting to show what they can do but he wasn't really like that at all. It makes me wonder, did he always know he had that talent, and he always thought he was going to rise to the top? Did he feel he didn't need to put himself out there, because he knew his moment was coming?”

There certainly didn’t seem to be any reticence or hesitation on Sawe’s part when he set about overcoming one of the strongest fields ever assembled for London and left them trailing in his wake with that burst of speed at 30km.

“It's such music to my ears, because, back in the when I was training [the group], I did a full block on sprinting mechanics and how important it was to run fast, even for marathons,” says Thomas. “Whether it's at 30km or in the last 200m, at some point if you've got that sprinting ability it's going to benefit you. I hope that [block] planted the seed for him to continue to work on that. It looks like he has and he's also developed a cracking kick. It's awesome.”

And, while the experience has changed Sawe’s world, it has also altered Thomas’ professional perspective and provided some food for thought about the future.

“During the last two or three years I've been working with more developed athletes, athletes that are already on pro contracts, which is good but I think this is giving me the bug to go back and look at younger talents again,” he says. “I could perhaps do something similar [to before] – setting up a small training camp, picking some good talent up and seeing if I can bring them right through instead of having them picked up by other, bigger management groups.”

Perhaps, then, London won’t be the last time that Thomas finds himself cheering an athlete he has coached towards a landmark victory.