Do you watch sports? wrote:
The sports biggest star currently is Kevin Mayer. Kipchoge is not putting any butts in a stadium, but surely he must be very popular in Kenya.
Nope ?? Not even close. Kipchoge and Mayer broke their World records on the same day but one story completely buried the other in the media. A lot of prominent decathletes complained how people don’t appreciate what it takes to break a decathlon world record. They are both Nike athletes and Kipchoge was the only track and field star to feature in Nike’s biggest campaign in decades. Meaning he’s selling more shoes than Mayer. Kipchoge has had the whole Breaking2 event and a National Geographic documentary about him, both very well received by the general public that doesn’t follow the sport. And for the social media kids, Kipchoge has about double as many followers as Mayer on Instagram even though he’s clearly not as comfortable or as adept at it. And finally, Kipchoge overwhelmingly won athlete of the year (partially based on a popular online vote) even though many athletics nerds agree that Mayer’s incredible achievement was just as phenomenal.
Marca’s front page day after both world records:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DnP0s-ZW0AIwCR8.jpg