Kenya’s Kelvin Kiptum, who this time last year had not even run a competitive marathon, blazed his way to smash the world record by clocking a stunning 2:00:35 to win the Chicago Marathon on Sunday.
The timing — yet to be ratified by World Athletics — wiped off 34 seconds from the previous world mark of 2:01:09 set by his fellow countryman, Eliud Kipchoge at the Berlin Marathon in September last year.
The Chicago course — a World Athletics Platinum Label marathon — produced fast times even in the women’s field, with Dutch star Sifan Hassan winning the women’s title at 2:13:44. It is the second-fastest time in women’s marathon history behind Tigst Assefa’s 2:11:53 set last month.
The star of show on Sunday, though, was Kiptum. He won the race by almost three and a half minutes — Kenya’s defending champion, Benson Kipruto was second in 2:04:02 and Somali-born Belgian Bashir Abdi third in 2:04:32 — and, with a quick glance at the clock before the finish line, waved and blew kisses at spectators. He crossed the line raising his arms to complete the stunning run.
“I saw the time in front of me,” Kiptum said. “I felt good inside of me, maybe a little adrenaline.
“I knew I was coming for a course record, but a world record. I am so happy,” he added. “A world record was not on my mind today, but I knew one day I would be a world record-holder.”
Largely competing in half marathons and 10,000m races before last year, the 23-year-old Kenyan made his marathon debut in December 2022 in Valencia, where he clocked 2:01:53 to win. In April at the London Marathon, he clocked 2:01:25 to become the second-fastest marathon runner of all time.
And on the “flat course” of Chicago, as described by Kiptum, the Kenyan bettered his own timing by 50 seconds and Kipchoge’s world mark from Berlin last year.
It is the third time a men’s world record was rewritten in Chicago, and the first since Morocco’s Khalid Khannouchi in 1999. Berlin was home to the previous two marks: Kipchoge (2:01:09, 2022) and Kenenisa Bekele (2:01:41, 2019).