He’s marathon world record holder Eliud Kipchoge’s ‘hero’: meet Bottle Claus

“The task of delivering water is super mundane, right?” says Kevin Sully, the co-host of track and field podcast “House of Run”.

“I’d never really thought about it. Part of my surprise was that [Schulke’s] reaction and his attention to detail, his skill, was perfectly matched to Kipchoge. It was like they found the all-time great water bottle delivery guy to go hand in hand with the all-time great marathoner.”

Kipchoge called Schulke a “hero” for assisting him in refuelling during his 2018 world record. Others, like the teenagers in Oceanside, call him the nickname that has stuck since he went viral in 2018: Bottle Claus.

“I was so astonished,” Schulke says of being recognised in southern California. “It made me proud because ‘Bottle Claus’ seems to be known all over the world.”

When the Berlin Marathon returned this year on September 24, the world was watching Kipchoge and the clock.

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Among the six marathons considered the most prestigious, Berlin is unique because its pancake-flat course produces exceptionally fast times. The last eight men’s marathon world records had been set there, including by Kipchoge in 2018 and again in 2022, when he finished in 2 hours, 1 minute, 9 seconds.

He streaked to victory in 2023 in 2:02:42, just one minute and 34 seconds slower than his year-old world record.

The race is unique among the major marathons in another way, which is why the spotlight was again on Schulke when he, the world’s first (and likely only) celebrated bottle-passer, partnered for a fourth time with the world’s most famous marathoner.

While in other marathons, bottles of nutrition are placed on tables throughout the 42km (26-mile) course for the runners to pick up, in Berlin, a few dozen elite men’s and women’s runners are paired with a specific volunteer who waits at every aid station to hand them their bottle.

Schulke has been passing bottles to runners with the same enthusiasm since he began volunteering in 1997 and eventually began managing the volunteer team.

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When he was first assigned to Kipchoge in 2017, no one seemed to notice much – except Kipchoge, who requested Schulke handle his bottles the following year.

A few days before the 2018 race, the two formally introduced themselves and improvised a handoff technique.

On race day, they connected on 13 perfect handoffs and Kipchoge claimed his first marathon world record. Schulke would fist-pump every success, then hop on his bike, speeding ahead of Kipchoge to reach the next aid station about three miles away.

After the 2018 world record, Schulke received Kipchoge’s race bib, which the runner signed with a message: “Dear Claus: Without you I would not have managed to run this world record.”

What Schulke didn’t know was that, during the marathon, television coverage of Kipchoge’s stoic expression and metronomic strides was also beginning to highlight him, with broadcasters commenting on the exchanges. When Schulke returned to his phone after the race, he was inundated with messages from friends.

Google searches for “Bottle Claus” spiked in the following days and marathon organisers leaned into the fascination.

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In 2022, the marathon posted a behind-the-scenes video on YouTube that followed Schulke to the airport, where he helped pick Kipchoge up, and around the course on race day.

“Didn’t know I can be so emotionally moved watching a man handing hydration bottles in a marathon,” the video’s top comment reads.

“It’s this absolute enthusiasm with which he does it, an indescribable passion,” says Mark Milde, the director of the Berlin Marathon. “He celebrates the moment, Eliud and the whole BMW Berlin Marathon. Every cheer is then crowned by his so-typical double fist.”

The celebration is relief, because the handoffs appear deceptively simple. On the way to his 2022 world record, Kipchoge held an average pace of 2:52 per kilometre (4:37 per mile), or about 21km an hour.

Bottle passers, meanwhile, are required to remain fixed in one place at aid stations.

At the first several stations, the lead pack is still bunched tight, with up to a dozen runners cruising past at top speed as volunteers fight to be seen among a thicket of arms holding out bottles. It is a fluid situation in every sense.

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Schulke makes himself seen by wearing a bright jacket, a band along one sleeve with Kipchoge’s name on it, and an intensely focused expression.

“My biggest remembrance of Berlin is the guy who was handing me water,” Kipchoge said in 2021. “Still my hero.”

A former marathoner who finished six Ironman triathlons, Schulke understands the repercussions of a bottle not delivered. For athletes operating at the limits of endurance, mid-race fuel – usually a drinkable mix of electrolytes and carbohydrates – is essential for replenishing depleted energy.

Books on marathon training devote entire chapters to the importance of mid-race refuelling. Even someone as accomplished as Kipchoge, a two-time Olympic gold medallist, isn’t immune.

Though several factors could have contributed to his stunning fade late in April’s Boston Marathon, Kipchoge couldn’t grab a bottle of nutrition from one aid-station table 19 miles in, and quickly lost his lead.

Schulke rides the marathon course in the days before the race to inspect aid stations. On race day, he instructs volunteers to study the headshot of their assigned athlete, and how to shake the bottles and open their mouthpiece.

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He carries a backpack with an air pump, tire patch and extra air tube for his bicycle, and the weight of what could go wrong.

Then again, the logistics of high-stress details are kind of his thing: as part of his day job for a large Berlin construction firm, he once helped oversee a decade-long reconstruction of a palace in the city centre that carried a budget of nearly US$700 million.

“The night before it’s hard to sleep because so many things can fail,” Schulke says. “I’m always very, very happy if it works well.”

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He is grateful for Kipchoge’s trust and hopes the marathoner sees in him someone as dedicated to his role as Kipchoge is to his.

Schulke says Kipchoge has always been warm toward him. “He is a very special person – he can just perform,” Schulke adds.

Schulke is similarly appreciative of the attention Kipchoge’s feats indirectly have conferred upon him, even if he is sometimes mystified as to why, for example, a YouTube video of his handoffs to Kipchoge in 2022 has been watched 2.8 million times.

His best explanation is the power of connection, how two people from disparate backgrounds and continents unexpectedly have worked together.

“Maybe it’s one of these positive stories we were looking for in these times,” he says.

Sully, the track and field podcaster, also believes there is something to the idea of connection. In road running, the slowest can compete on the same course, and on the same day, as the fastest. A volunteer such as Schulke can play a vital role in the performance of the elite.

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“I don’t know what the other sport equivalent would be,” Sully says. “You’re not able to string Roger Federer’s racquet for him. Can you be someone’s cut man in boxing [preventing and treating physical damage to a fighter during the breaks between rounds] just because you love the sport and are passionate about it?

“I think what was cool is that is exactly, I think, how all of us would react because he would have such immense pressure on him to do it right, because who wants to screw up a Kipchoge world-record attempt? It’s like a work of art.”

In June, Schulke arrived with his own support team of eight friends in Oceanside, California, for the 4,828km bicycle race Race Across America.

For two days, Schulke’s support team fed him nothing but energy drinks, some the same kind used by Kipchoge. By the time Schulke hit the Rocky Mountains he was begging for muesli, pasta and ice cream.

When he rolled into a firehouse transformed into an aid station in the Midwestern state of Kansas, a volunteer had decorated a biscuit with “Bottle Claus”.

When he finished in the east coast state of Maryland after 11 days and 3 hours, he went to a hotel, laid down and didn’t move for the next nine hours. A short time later he received a congratulatory video.

“It’s really impressive what you have done,” Kipchoge said. “All the very best. This is your friend, Eliud.”