Kelvin Kiptum Breaks World Marathon Record
Kenyan Kelvin Kiptum broke the marathon world record to win the Chicago Marathon in an unofficial 2 hours and 35 seconds.
Kiptum, 23, broke compatriot Eliud Kipchoge’s world record of 2:01:09 set at the 2022 Berlin Marathon.
Kipchoge is the only person known to have completed 26.2 miles in under two hours in 2019 when he ran 1:59:40.2 in Vienna, Austria.
The youngest marathoner to have run under 2:02:00, Kiptum obliterated a star-studded field of elite athletes on his way to the historic win.
Kiptum stormed the 2023 London Marathon title — his second marathon ever — in 2:01:25, just 16 seconds shy of Eliud Kipchoge’s world record.
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His competitors included Belgium’s Bashir Abdi, the marathon bronze medalist from the 2020 Olympics and the 2022 World Championships.
Also in the men’s chase was Ethiopian Seifu Tura, the 2021 Chicago winner and last year’s runner-up.
Chicago’s 2021 champion Seifu Tura of Ethiopia, who was runner-up to Kipruto in 2022, raced for the third consecutive year.
Kiptum and Mateiko were forced to drop Pace setters in the first quarter of the race.
Kiptum made his marathon debut during the 2022 Valencia Marathon, where he raced to the fastest debut in history.
He opted out of last month’s Berlin Marathon to save his energy for the Chicago Marathon.
More than 47,000 thousand runners thronged the streets in Chicago on Sunday, the marathon’s largest runner field to date.
Kelvin Kiptum Breaks World Marathon Record