Eliud Kipchoge, the undisputed marathon GOAT, will return to the streets of London in April where he hopes to strike up a friendship with the British marathon debutant Alex Yee, who is also the Olympic triathlon champion.

In what is a major coup for the London Marathon organisers, an elite field that already included all the Olympic and Paralympic champions, as well as Britain’s best distance runners in Emile Cairess and Eilish McColgan, has its icing on the cake.

Kipchoge, who is now 40, is a double Olympic champion, the winner of an unprecedented 13 ‘marathon majors’ and, perhaps most famously, became the first person to run the 26.2 mile distance in under two hours back in 2019.

Yee, who will make an audacious attempt to transition from the triathlon to join his first elite marathon field, is a huge fan of Kipchoge and the respect following the Briton’s dramatic Olympic triathlon triumph in Paris is clearly mutual.

When told this week that Yee wants to meet him, Kipchoge said: “I’d love to know him more. I’d like to meet him before the race and share the lives we live… share a meal, have a coffee, tell him what I believe about running and why running will actually help the whole world.

“The discussion will be about humanity, about the love of sport that is running. How are we going to sell the sport of running? I think it will be a pure discussion.”

As well as being a prolific champion, who also won a world title on the track over 5,000m way back in 2003, Kipchoge is a huge advocate for community running and says that his motivation now stems from the inspiration he can provide.

“That’s what helps me to wake up every morning, go outside and run – it’s purely about the love of the sport,” he said. Asked when he would retire, Kipchoge said: “When the world becomes a running world – when you have four billion people running every day.”

Kipchoge, who was forced out of the Olympic marathon in Paris shortly after 13 miles with a back injury, has not raced since but believes that he can still compete for what would be a record-extending fifth London Marathon win.

“Running is not straight all the time – sometimes you can hit a bump,” he said. “My recovery went well. I’m training in a good way and I can compete with the youngest people.

“In Africa we say we are chasing one rabbit at a time. This rabbit in front of me is London. That’s purely what all my mind, my heart, my energy is on. After that I’ll make a new announcement.”

The new Olympic marathon champion is Tamirat Tola, who will also race in London where Britain’s Cairess, who was fourth in Paris and third last year in London, could conceivably end what is now a 32-year for a British men’s winner.

There is also a mouth-watering women’s field that includes Sifan Hassan – the Olympic marathon champion and also a double track medallist in Paris – and Ruth Chepngetich, who last year became the first woman to run a marathon under 2hr 10mins. McColgan, who is the Commonwealth 10,000m champion, will also make her long-awaited marathon debut in a race that her mum, Liz, famously won in 1996.