Ruth Chepng’etich won today’s Chicago Marathon, becoming the first woman in history to run a sub-2:10 marathon, finishing in 2:09:56.
The Kenyan’s time shed nearly a full two minutes off of the prior world record, which was 2:11:53. That time had been set by Tigst Assefa of Ethiopia last year at the Berlin Marathon.
Chepng’etich, wearing Nike’s AlphaFly 3, stormed to the front of the field at the start, with a 15:00 opening 5 kilometers that gave her a two second lead over Ethiopian Sutume Kebede she would never relinquish.
Kebede was the only runner in the same zip code as Chepng’etich through the 10 kilometer mark with another 15 minute split. But over the next stretch of miles the elastic between the two stretched ever further, and by the halfway mark Chepng’etich had built a 14 second lead.
Chepng’etich’s 40 kilometer split saw her come through in 2:03:11, needing to cover the final 2.2ish kilometers in 6:49 to squeak under the nearly unfathomable 2:10 mark. She barely made it — needing 6:47 to get it done.
Her final margin of victory was seven minutes and 36 seconds.
Chepng’etich dedicated her victory to the memory of men’s marathon world record holder Kelvin Kiptum, who died earlier this year in a car accident.
That delta has to be one of the closest of all time. I remember when Radcliffe ran 2:15 at the 2003 London Marathon her delta to the male winner (almost 2:08) was almost the same (7/128 = 5.4…I am neglecting the exact seconds), So we have seen these types of female results on a relative scale previously compared to guys, but the scale moved faster by 6 minutes in the last 21 years !!!
The women’s marathon world record was smashed this morning. An improvement by 2-minutes in the world record, breaking the 2:10 barrier.
She averaged 4:57 a mile…and went out at 2:07 pace… (15:00 first 5k). She came through half in 1:04:16… a time that’s only been bettered by 4 women in history when racing the half-marathon…
Her first mile that was slower than 5:00 was mile 19.
It’s mind-blowing, unbelievable. It’s hard how to make sense of this one.
It’s a barrier that didn’t look like it was going to be broken for many years.
It was crazy seeing. When major breakthroughs like this occur, you’ve got to consider everything. This one was wild…
Some context for the people who don’t follow running:
I’m not accusing anyone of doping. I said…the performance is so mind-blowing it begs the question how? Was it a new super super shoe? A new supplement? Training? I have no idea.
And YES in modern elite running, we have to ask about doping. It’s sad. I wish we didn’t. But it’s part of elite sport. To not ask, is foolish.
Some context:
-Chepngetich’s agent is Frederico Rosa. Let’s just say he does NOT have the best reputation. Partly because of how many past athletes have doped. There’s a long history here. Google it.
Second, Kenya has had so many doping positives lately that it’s been at risk for non-compliance. Just a few weeks ago the chair of their anti-doping told the news "“We are at risk of not being able to host or send any of our sportsmen for international competitions because the Agency cannot carry out its regular testing activities both in competition and out of competition.”
This isn’t secret knowledge. Less than a year ago the NY Times ran a piece on Kenya’s national doping crisis.
Now…there are many wonderful, amazing Kenyan runners. And that’s why supporting clean athlete is so important. Because the dopers tarnish everyone.
Point being: I’m not accusing anyone. I’m saying this is a mind blowing performance. And sadly, given history and context we have to ask the question of how it’s possible.
That’s it. If you know the sport, you know.
It sucks. It’s why so many of us fight for clean sport so that we can celebrate these moments without questioning.
Gotcha, and I am not trying to diminish her great accomplishment… Not perfect, agreed, but pretty darn close, leading Korir to a 2 min PB as well.
I am not the biggest fan of pacers in majors, but since they are allowed, I think they close the gap to perfect conditions considerably. I think same conditions without pacers, maybe she is a minute slower, considering the swirling wind and additional mental strain.
Yes, it’s very similar to Radcliffe’s 2:15 many years ago, both in terms of similarity to the men’s record and in terms of progression. I was ecstatic when she produced that performance - I became her biggest fan. I find myself a bit more jaded these days, but I also don’t remember this amount of skepticism when Radcliffe completed her run.
Please also remember that female marathoners can be paced wire to wire and sheltered by their pacers, so it makes sense that the records would be closer percentage-wise for the marathon than for races in which women don’t have these advantages.
I just wanted to check some math where women can pace each other wire to wire (as do men), so looked at the 1500m world record 3:26 for El Gherrouj vs 3:49 for Faith Kipeyegon. 23/206 = 11 percent.
In the 100m (no drafting at all) 9.58 Bolt vs 10:49 FloJo, we have 0.91/9.58 = 9.49 percent.
So indeed having male pacers around helps to close that gap. I guess the best proxy would be Kipchoge’s 1:59 paced to use apples and apples and then we roughly have 10/120 = 8.33 percent.
So even if we use Kipchoge’s paced sub 2 as the male benchmark, this is a darn amazing performance (as was Radcliffe’s)
My manager at Campbell Soup, who was a dedicated and very successful horse handicapper (when Garden State Park was still open, he managed his work hours so he could leave at 3 o’clock to catch the early evening races), often said “Figures never lie, but Liars figure”
I guess that meant that unscrupulous people will manipulate data to support their position?
In this case I had no position other than saying the spread to the women’s winner was around the same as Paula Radcliffe’s 2:15 day in London 2003. So the check on the 1500 and 100m record spreads was just to see what shakes out in those events (100m no drafting, 1500m women drafting women, marathon can have women drafting men).
So that’s just where the numbers landed. We can use the numbers to go ahead and do whatever stories we want to propagate now
It’s been a year of incredible performances in endurance sports. There’s nothing untoward with never been seen before performances - no eyebrows should be raised
It is interesting to see how blatant the accusations are in the running media pointing to all the doping positives in Kenya and yet the major cycling media outlets relatively have their heads in the omerta sand about the Pogi heroics. After riding away from everyone in the TdF in his last 4 races he’s been riding away from an entire peloton for a cumulative 210km and no one can do anything. But hey, a white European guy can’t possibly be on anything but a black Kenyan woman must be totally juiced up. Maybe just the balance of media feeds I am getting that are skewed. I just am finding the relative treatment to be amusing. Pogi’s gotten to the status now that the entire sport goes down if he’s doped. One Kenyan world record holder for now is expendible if that’s what ends up in the IAAF/World Athletics pot to deal with.
have no fear, I don’t think anyone doing superheroics during this years TdF and other world tour races have raced in the USA so USADA has no say.
But my comments were really about the media in cycling largely being in some kind of Omerta mode. A person wins 26 races and wins Lombardy by the biggest margin since the 1970’s defeating the the UCI worlds and Olympic TT gold medalist by > 3 min after a 50km breakaway (in Lombardy) and largely “he’s so awesome”. Meanwhile a Kenyan woman gets paced by tall me and beats the marathon world record by 2 min and it’s every second article seems to point to doping (which it may very well be). But feels like a double standard, but that could just be the media feed and algorithms pushing certain articles to me.
But a white women from Loughborough UK sets a 2:15 marathon world record being paced by men and finishing 7 behind the world record holder gets knighted (Dame), while a Kenyan woman doing the same thing in 2024 “must be on the juice”. I do realize that a lot of doping busts happened between 2003 and now, so the media SHOULD be more discerning, but then why all the pats on the back from this year’s pro cycling season?
