Felix Limo retires

One of my favourite marathon runners announced his retirement today. Felix Limo had a purple patch from 2004-06 winning several of the marathon majors. We first met at Amsterdam in 2003 when both making our marathon debuts - his considerably faster than mine ! He was changing on the peg across from mine in the old Olympic stadium and was happy to exchange a few friendly words before heading out onto the track for the start. He came second in 2:06:42 that day, narrowly beaten by William Kispang who I vividly remember devouring the most enormous breakfast on race morning: bacon, sausage, eggs, fried potatos, the works. He waddled away from the table with a belly looking like he was heavil pregnant with twins. And then three hours later 2.06, unbelievable.
My other meeting with Felix was at London 2006 (left) . He had blown away the field to win in 2.06 on a wet day defeating amongst others Haile G. We were sitting at the back of the bus on our way to the river boat to get back to the Tower hotel and he was chatting away without a care in the world, talking about life back home and how he would be relaxing after his marathon win.

Just a very polite, modest guy and good company.