He’s marathon world record holder Eliud Kipchoge’s ‘hero’ and a YouTube hit: meet Bottle Claus

Bottle Claus, as Claus-Henning Schulke is best known, rose to fame at the 2018 Berlin Marathon when his bottle handoffs helped Eliud Kipchoge’s world-record run

We look at the ‘indescribable passion’ of the 57-year-old volunteer, who continues to aid Kipchoge’s success at the event, and his unlikely social media stardom

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Eliud Kipchoge and Claus-Henning “Bottle Claus” Schulke embrace. Bottle Claus has become a star in the running world for his perfect nutrition bottle handoffs and fist-pump celebration, but what makes the 57-year-old Berliner so good at what he does? Photo: Instagram/@bottle_claus

Published: 4:15am, 5 Oct 2023Updated: 4:59am, 5 Oct 2023

Before he set off on a bicycle race across the United States this summer, Claus-Henning Schulke was last-minute shopping in Oceanside, California, when he noticed three teenagers approaching him in the Walmart aisle.

“Are you Bottle Claus?” they asked.

Schulke is not a TikTok star. He is not a renowned singer or an artist. He is a 57-year-old civil engineer from Berlin, Germany with silver hair and clear-rimmed glasses.

Yet among running fans, he has become internationally recognised because, since 2017, he has been the guy who hands Eliud Kipchoge, the world’s fastest marathoner, his bottles of nutrition during the Berlin Marathon.

Schulke gets ready to hand off a nutrition bottle to Eliud Kipchoge during the 2023 Berlin Marathon. Photo: Youtube/@FloTrack

Runners who tune in to watch the 38-year-old Kenyan Kipchoge have become intrigued by the middle-aged volunteer who punctuates every successful handoff with a double fist-pump celebration and helps keep Kipchoge on record paces.

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