Lost tape shows Rojo pacing Ndereba to her 2:18:47 record
LetsRun co-founder Robert Johnson watched the footage for the first time and found two Olympic champions critiquing his form on live TV.
A long-lost VHS broadcast of the 2001 Chicago Marathon turned up on YouTube this week, and LetsRun co-founder Robert Johnson used it to go back to the day he was hired to pace Catherine Ndereba to a world record.
Ndereba ran 2:18:47 that day. Johnson, better known to LetsRun readers as Rojo, says he was brought in to "protect" and "guide" her, and that he never ran another road race afterward.
Two Olympic champions on the broadcast
The part he did not know about until now is what the commentary booth was doing while he worked. Johnson says he watched the race footage for the first time this week and found two Olympic champions picking apart his running form on live television.
His own summary of the day is shorter than any of that.
She broke the record. And me.
What it actually means
This is not a new result or a correction to the record books. The 2:18:47 has stood on the page for 25 years. What is new is the tape, which had not been publicly available, and the first-person account that comes with it from the guy who was in the middle of the pack doing a job most people watching would not have clocked.
It is also a reminder of how differently the record attempt worked then. A male pacer running alongside a woman chasing a world record was the setup in Chicago in 2001, and the man doing it was a LetsRun founder rather than a contracted rabbit on a start list anyone would recognize today.
LetsRun posted the write-up and the link to the footage on its account. If you want the full version, including what the commentators said, that is where it lives.
She broke the record. And me.
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