Sabastian Sawe conquered sport’s Everest. Where does it fit among the greatest feats?

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One of many wonders of the London Marathon, perfectly defined by founder Chris Brasher as the “suburban Everest”, is the sight of people wrestling with the parameters of their potential.

Beyond the allure of the summit itself, there is that pitiless duel with the clock. Sub-five hours? Sub-four? Even for a rarefied breed, sub-three?

An entire industry of pacers and training programmes exists to support amateur runners in breaking their desired barriers over 42.1 kilometres.

The one watershed to elude humanity was sub-two hours, until self-effacing Sabastian Sawe breezed straight through it in London’s spring sunshine, accelerating as he breasted the tape.

Nobody seemed quite prepared for a feat so seismic. When a predicted winning time of around two hours first flashed up on screen, Steve Cram explained it was a statistical quirk, calculated purely on the basis of the previous mile.

Except Sawe’s surge was only beginning, as he propelled his lithe frame down the Mall and shattered perhaps sport’s ultimate glass ceiling.

A discipline that traces its origins to ancient Greece has inched only recently towards such a giddying landmark. When Spyridon Louis dipped under three hours to win the inaugural modern Olympic marathon, in Athens in 1896, he was so conspicuously the class of the field that his nearest rival was seven minutes behind.

Even 130 years later, the notion of going under two felt as if it belonged to the realm of video games. On the only occasion it had ever happened, in 2019, Eliud Kipchoge had needed a rotating cast of pacemakers and a looped Vienna course with only eight feet (2.4 metres) of total elevation.

Sawe, true to the spirit of the loneliest event, has managed it without any such crutches or tweaks. Yes, you can credit his quantum leap to his feathery wisp of a super-shoe, but there is no footwear on earth capable of delivering this result without supreme speed endurance from the athlete wearing it.

To put it into context, the Kenyan’s average pace was a shade over 13mph (21km/h), a level that most gym treadmills do not even possess. Most casual runners would struggle to last 30 seconds at such a setting, never mind a couple of hours.

Sawe recorded negative splits, tearing through the second half of the marathon in 59 minutes. Maybe you could imagine running 100 metres in 17 seconds. But could you comprehend doing it 422 times in a row?

The greatest compliment that can be........

© The Sydney Morning Herald