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 12 months when she turned the primary lady 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 file set by Ethiopia’s Tigist Assefa in 2023.
Chepngetich, who has received the Chicago Marathon thrice 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 in opposition to 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 file which exists in ladies’s marathon working – the women-only race world file.
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 successful 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 file may fall once more on the 2025 TCS London Marathon.
She stated: “The TCS London Marathon all the time brings collectively the most effective athletes on this planet and I’m positive this 12 months might be as aggressive as ever. Myself, Peres and the opposite ladies are robust, 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 will decrease Peres’s world file of two:16:16 from final 12 months. With the energy of the sphere, I feel we will assist one another and perhaps the world file 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 in the course of the Covid-19 pandemic, after which ninth final 12 months.
In complete, she has run three of the ten quickest ladies’s marathon instances in historical past and is the one lady 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 12 months’s TCS London Marathon was the most important 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 12 months will embody the reigning Olympic champion Tamirat Tola of Ethiopia.
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