European Athletics (EAA) – News – Viktor Röthlin: “If I run the European marathon record in London, I will be yodelling”

Switzerland’s 2010 European Athletics Championships marathon gold medallist Viktor Röthlin isn’t so unwise as to promise a European record at the Virgin London Marathon on Sunday, but it’s certainly at the back of his mind.

And he has a special surprise in store for the audience at the end of the race should he go faster than the record of 2:06:36, which is jointly held by Portugal’s Antonio Pinto and France’s Benoit Zwierchiewski.

“If I run the European marathon record here in London, I will be yodelling on the finish line I think people want to see me do it!” revealed Röthlin.

“My parents were old-fashioned; they come from the heart of Switzerland and thought that sports were for the sort of people that did not work hard enough. They sent me to learn yodelling. I can do it but nowadays I don’t do it very often, but I like it.”

“I’m not in world record shape but I feel I can go faster than my personal best (2:07:23, set when winning the 2008 Tokyo Marathon). If the race goes the way I hope it will go, then maybe I can think about the European record. But I just want to run fast, I think I can have my fastest race since 2009, I’m back to where I was physically and mentally before and I hope the finish line comes as soon as possible.

“The European record was one of my targets after the Beijing Olympics in 2008 but after 2009, this is probably the point where I can think about it again. The European Athletics Championships was a tactical race but London is one of the fastest courses in the world and the crowds are supposed to be fantastic.

Röthlin’s story about what happened in 2009 has been told plenty of times but is always worth re-telling as an inspirational anecdote for anyone who feels like throwing in the towel on the sport.

In February 2009, he contracted a thrombosis during a flight to the United Arab Emirates and suffered a potentially fatal double pulmonary embolism. (“I felt a big pain in my chest and I was spitting blood.”)

He was told to rest from running and he was put on blood-thinning drugs for six months. In addition, he also had to endure foot surgery later that year.

“Beside the fact that I got married in 2009, that was a horrible year, but when you lose something in your life (being unable to run) sometimes you realise how important it was to you.”

“When you start to realise that your life can be over very quickly, you start to enjoy your life even more. Being in London is also something special; it’s like the final lap in the stadium. To be honest, I wasn’t worried about dying (after the pulmonary embolisms), but I was scared that I couldn’t walk up stairs, play with kids, that was my main problem,” reflected Röthlin in London, revealing that even if the embolisms were not fatal he could have still lost a leg.

“What I know now is that I’m made for thrombosis, it’s a genetic thing, it’s not a problem with running; it’s when I’m not moving that I’m in trouble. Now I know what to do, how to deal with it, take measures, but I’ve never had one training session when I was thinking ‘could it happen again?’”

“If I’m travelling and I’m in the car for two or three hours, then I’m in danger, and do a few laps of the car.

“I went altitude training in Kenya for the last 10 years and I couldn’t go in 2008 and 2009 so going back again at the end of last year makes me feel like that chapter has closed now. I did the normal training that I did before and I think it was successful.”

However, Röthlin knows that after his triumph in Barcelona, he cannot perform his life-preserving routines in secret, away from prying eyes.

“Switzerland is not a big athletics nation. I won silver at the 2006 Europeans in Göteborg and bronze the next year at the World Championships but the European Championships gold in Barcelona tops the lot.

“I won the gold medal on Barcelona on 1 August which was also the Swiss national day and so the reception I got when I got home was amazing. Now almost everybody in Switzerland knows me, it’s difficult to walk down the street without anybody recognising, but the good thing is that Swiss people have a lot of respect. They may know you but they leave you alone.”

However, if he breaks the European marathon record and then performs his promised finish line recital on Sunday, it remains to be seen if his Swiss fans continue to keep their distance.

European Athletics (EAA) – News