Claus-Henning Schulke observed three youngsters approaching him in the Wal-Mart aisle as he was finishing up his last-minute shopping in Oceanside before departing on a cycling race across the United States this summer.
They inquired, “Are you the Bottle Claus?”
The TikTok star Schulke is not. He is not an accomplished musician or artist. He has silver hair, clear-rimmed glasses, and is a 57-year-old civil engineer from Berlin.
However, among lovers of running, he has gained recognition due to the fact that, starting in 2017, he has been the one who has been supplying Eliud Kipchoge, the fastest marathoner in the world, with his nourishment bottles during the Berlin Marathon. The middle-aged volunteer who ends every successful handoff with a double has captured the attention of runners who watch Kipchoge race.
When the Berlin Marathon returns Sunday, the world again will be watching Kipchoge, the 38-year-old Kenyan, and the clock. 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 have been set there, including by Kipchoge in 2018 and again last year, when he finished in 2 hours 1 minute 9 seconds.
The race is unique among the major marathons in another way, which is why the spotlight again will be on Schulke too when the world’s first (and likely only) celebrated bottle-passer and the most famous marathoner partner for a fourth time. Where other races place athletes’ bottles of nutrition on tables throughout the 26.2-mile course to be picked up by runners, Berlin organizers pair a few dozen elite men’s and women’s runners with a specific volunteer who waits at every aid station, waiting 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; this year he is expecting 50. 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 as well.
A few days before the 2018 race, they 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.
What Schulke didn’t know was that television coverage following Kipchoge’s stoic expression and metronomic strides also was 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 organizers leaned into the fascination. Last year the marathon posted to YouTube a behind-the-scenes video 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,” its top comment reads.
“It’s this absolute enthusiasm with which he does it, an indescribable passion,” said 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 page of 4:37 per mile, or about 13 mph. Bottle passers, meanwhile, are required to remain fixed in one place at aid stations. At the first several stations, the lead pack still is 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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