The Warm Up Track 2024: Marco Arop – The 800m World champion inspired by David Rudisha

Sportsworld

Canada’s Marco Arop is the reigning World champion for the men’s 800 metres. He describes being inspired to take up the event after finding the video of David Rudisha breaking the world record to win Olympic gold in 2012.

Marco tells The Warm Up Track that he watched it repeatedly. Fittingly, it was the Kenyan who presented him with his World gold in Budapest in 2023. For Marco, that moment was even better than winning the race and, in the near future, he hopes that they can find time to sit down together and talk all things 800 metres.

Having made his name as a front-runner, an athlete who likes to lead a race from gun to tape, Marco was finding it hard to hold on and win races at the highest level. He’s very candid about just how hard it was it for him go against his natural instincts and change his tactics, and how not making the final at the Tokyo Olympics was part of that difficult journey.

In the late 1990s, Marco’s family fled the war in Sudan, eventually settling in Canada. So how much contact does he have now with his family in Sudan?

Also, while he represents Canada, how aware is he of being a symbol of hope for refugees everywhere?

Finally, with some incredible times being clocked this year in his event, does Marco think that Rudisha’s world record is on borrowed time?

Image: Gold medallist Marco Arop of Team Canada reacts after winning the Men's 800m Final during day eight of the World Athletics Championships Budapest 2023 at National Athletics Centre on August 26, 2023 in Budapest, Hungary. (Photo by Steph Chambers/Getty Images)