Kenyan clocked 2:09:56 in Chicago final yr and can now tackle Sifan Hassan and Peres Jepchirchir within the British capital on April 27
World record-holder Ruth Chepngetich will run the TCS London Marathon on April 27 and he or she believes she will set one other world mark on British soil.
Chepngetich shocked the world on the Financial institution of America Chicago Marathon final yr when she turned the primary girl in historical past to interrupt the two:10 barrier for the marathon. The 30-year-old Kenyan clocked 2:09:56 final October, knocking almost two minutes off the earlier world report set by Ethiopia’s Tigist Assefa in 2023.
Chepngetich, who has gained the Chicago Marathon 3 times plus marathon gold on the World Championships in 2019, will now set her sights on making her mark on the TCS London Marathon the place she’s going to come up towards the Olympic champion Sifan Hassan and the reigning London champion Peres Jepchirchir in a mouth-watering match-up of marathon greats.
In addition to being the defending champion, Jepchirchir is the proprietor of the second world report which exists in ladies’s marathon operating – the women-only race world report.
Ruth Chepngetich (Getty)
In contrast to the Chicago Marathon, the place the elite ladies run alongside their male counterparts, the TCS London Marathon has a stand-alone elite ladies’s race and Jepchirchir’s profitable time of two:16:16 within the 2024 version was the quickest ever on this class.
Chepngetich believes with the calibre of discipline assembled that world report might fall once more on the 2025 TCS London Marathon.
She mentioned: “The TCS London Marathon all the time brings collectively the very best athletes on the earth and I’m positive this yr will likely be as aggressive as ever. Myself, Peres and the opposite ladies are sturdy, so it is going to be a aggressive one and I wish to put together as greatest as I can and we’ll see if we are able to decrease Peres’s world report of two:16:16 from final yr. With the power of the sector, I believe we are able to help one another and perhaps the world report will fall.”
Chepngetich has raced the London Marathon twice earlier than, ending third within the distinctive 2020 version of the occasion, which was held on a multi-lap course round St James’s Park throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, after which ninth final yr.
In whole, she has run three of the ten quickest ladies’s marathon occasions in historical past and is the one girl to run inside 2:16 on three separate events.
Within the males’s discipline it has been introduced that defending champion Alex Mutiso of Kenya will return to defend his title. Mutiso’s win eventually yr’s TCS London Marathon was the largest of his profession and helped him win choice on the Kenyan marathon workforce for the Paris Olympic Video games the place he completed twenty first.
Mutiso’s opponents this yr will embrace the reigning Olympic champion Tamirat Tola of Ethiopia.
» Subscribe to AW journal right here, take a look at our new podcast right here or signal as much as our digital archive of again points from 1945 to the current day right here