Kenya's Sabastian Sawe poses with his new world record time written on his running shoe at the finish of the 2026 London Marathon in central London on April 26, 2026. (Photo by JUSTIN TALLIS / AFP) / “Restricted to editorial use - sponsorship of content subject to LMEL agreement”.
London: Kenya's Sabastian Sawe on Sunday shattered one of the most elusive barriers in athletics, becoming the first man to dip below the two-hour mark in the marathon.
Sawe, sporting state-of-the-art running shoes and spurred on by second-placed Yomif Kejelcha of Ethiopia, clocked a barely believable 1hr 59min 30sec to retain his London crown.
It shattered by 65 seconds the previous best of 2:00:35 set in Chicago in 2023 by the late Kelvin Kiptum.
"The goalposts have literally just moved for marathon running and where you benchmark yourself as being world class," said BBC pundit Paula Radcliffe, who held the women's marathon record of 2:15:25 from 2003 to 2019.
"I did think that mark could be beaten but not today.
"It is a lesson to everybody out there. We say don't go out too fast and they went out smartly and paced it really well. Smart racing brought it to the line."
The two-hour barrier has long been a goal of increasing numbers of elite marathon runners, not least Kenya's Eliud Kipchoge.
In October 2019, Kipchoge famously broke that barrier as he timed 1:59:40 on the streets of Vienna.
But the time was not ratified as a world record because he ran with specialised shoes, standard competition rules for pacing and fluids were not followed, and it was not an open event.
Kenyan Paul Tergat's time of 2:04:55 in the 2003 Berlin Marathon was the first ratified world record over the 26.2-mile (42.2-km) distance.
Ethiopian Haile Gebrselassie twice bettered that mark, both times in Berlin, dipping under 2:04:00.
The record then swung back into Kenyan hands, first with Patrick Makau and then Wilson Kipsang and Dennis Kimetto setting new marks.
Kipchoge then set new standards, again in Berlin, in 2018 and then 2022. Kiptum rose to prominence a year later before his tragic death in 2024.
