Kipchoge runs fastest marathon, fails to break 2 hours; More than 2 minutes quicker than official world record

Monza (Italy), May 6

Eliud Kipchoge ran the quickest recorded marathon on Saturday, crossing the line at the Monza Formula One track in two hours and 25 seconds but missing out on an ambitious attempt to break the two-hour barrier. 

The 32-year-old’s time smashed the official mark of 2:02:57 set by fellow Kenyan Dennis Kimetto in Berlin in 2014 but will not enter the record books largely due to a non-compliant system of pacemaking. Kipchoge rated it as the finest performance in a career that includes a gold medal at the Rio Games last year and a personal best official time of 2:03:05, the third-fastest in history.

Kipchoge and the only other competitors, Eritrean Zersenay Tadese and Ethiopian Lelisa Desisa, ran behind an arrow-head formation of pacemakers, to reduce drag, and a car beaming a green line on the road behind it to show the required speed for the sub-two hour target.

Amid deep scepticism, Nike pitched the attempt as sport’s “moon shot”, with a keen eye on sales of its running shoes. It designed a lightweight shoe with a carbon-fibre insole. 

In 2014, Runners World magazine predicted a sub-two under normal race conditions would not happen until 2075, based on analysis of more than 10,000 top marathon performances.

The race began in pre-dawn gloom at a brutal speed behind pacemakers, who were world class runners in their own right, including former world champion middle distance runner Bernard Lagat of the United States. A total of 30 pacemakers split into groups of six, taking turns to set a tempo in a race run 63 years to the day after Briton Roger Bannister became the first man to run a mile in less than four minutes. The sub-two hour mark required a pace below four minutes and 35 seconds per mile, which the determined Kipchoge managed to match until falling behind the pace car in the last two laps of the 2.4 km circuit. — Reuters

Shoe-selling gimmick?

Eliud Kipchoge’s achievement of timing two minutes, 32 seconds faster than the record of 2:02.57 (Dennis Kimetto, 2014) is phenomenal. But many observers believe that this event was just a promotional gimmick by shoe-making company Nike. The critics do have a point because of the following reasons:

• Kipchoge was helped by a group of 30 elite pacers, who joined the race and opted out in turn
• The pacer ran ahead of Kipchoge in an arrow-head formation to reduce wind resistance for Kipchoge
• The Formula-1 track at Monza was chosen because it had far fewer bends than the usual city marathon courses 
• The runners were handed essential fluids on the move by moped, so they didn’t have to slow down at feeding stations
• Nike’s rival Adidas is also working on a sub-2 hour marathon project — the idea is to sell more shoes