Kenyan 800m specialist David Rudisha graduated from the same school as another 800m star, former world record holder Wilson Kippketer. He started his career off as a 400m runner and boasts a personal best of sub-46 seconds in the event, but it soon became clear that he would be a better 800m runner.

Within a year of switching to the longer race, Rudisha won the gold medal at the 2006 World Junior Championships in Beijing. He missed the 2008 Olympic Games in the same city, but in 2009 he took the world by storm. In September in Rieti in Italy, he bettered Sammy Koskei’s 25-year-old record to post a time of 1:42.01 – the fourth fastest of all time.

At the 2010 Bislett Games he beat Sebastian Coe's 31-year-old meet record with a run of 1:42.04, giving him another place in the top-ten fastest ever 800m. The Kenyan was clearly a threat to Kipketer’s long-standing record, and at Heusden, Belgium he ran a 1:41.51, only four tenths of a second off the Kenyan-born Dane’s time.