CNN
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Jacob Kiplimo shattered the half marathon world record with a blistering run on Sunday.
The 24-year-old Ugandan was competing in the Barcelona half marathon where he became the first person ever to complete the distance in under 57 minutes, per World Athletics, which added that the record would be subject to its usual ratification procedure.
Kiplimo finished the race with a time of 56:42 and smashed the previous world record by 48 seconds, the biggest ever single improvement on the menâs half marathon world record. Prior to Kiplimoâs incredible run, Ethiopian athlete Yomif Kejelcha held the record with a time of 57:30.
âIt has been the perfect race,â Kiplimo said after his run, per World Athletics. âIdeal temperature, no wind at all, fantastic circuit – everything went better than expected.
âThe pacemaker set the agreed 2:45 pace but I found myself full of energy and decided to inject a brisker rhythm from the third kilometre, but I never imagined to perform under the 57 minute barrier, thatâs astonishing.â
Kiplimo ran at an average speed of 22.3 kilometers-per-hour on his way to breaking the record and finished more than two minutes ahead of Kenyaâs Geo
8 Comments
duxup
I never understood running until long ago I was running for some school event and just got into that grove where … it didn't hurt to run and I felt like I could go forever.
How these guys do it for that long and that fast still amazes me, but I felt like i got a little glimpse into how it works.
adharmad
Something about the East African runners is just built differently to excel in endurance running. Probably a combination of genetics and training.
vivzkestrel
20 kms in 57 mins??? goddamn that is like a km every 3 mins and that too on a sustained run.
dinp
The article mentions, he is going to run the marathon, looking forward to what he can do in that distance. I feel it's only a matter of time until someone breaks the 2 hour barrier in an official race. Lot of people thought it would be Kelvin Kiptum, unfortunately he passed away in an accident.
rurban
Sports press is a joke. Didn't they talk a single time to a runner yet? They didn't find find out about the carbon shoe revolution yet, but triathlon had already banned them!
bramhaag
Kiplimo is managed by Rosa, who was involved in some of the most famous doping cases in the sport [1] [2]. This new record is a bit suspicious (a relatively new record broken by 49s) and WADA has stopped caring about doping…
This is the 5th running record broken in a week (2x 1 mile, 3k, 5k, and now HM), the other ones being indoor times that match the current outdoor records. I wonder if they will start banning certain shoe technologies during races now, but of course they cannot ban athletes from using illegal shoes during training.
[1] https://www.capitalfm.co.ke/sports/2015/04/13/ak-suspends-ro…
[2] https://www.reuters.com/article/sports/italian-agent-charged…
bisRepetita
Kiplomo now has his sights set on the marathon, and said he will be resting until the London Marathon in April
I'd love to know what "resting" means for this guy practically.
rappatic
Posters on LetsRun.com noted that Kiplimo was close enough to the lead car to potentially draft off it and avoid wind resistance. It is hard to otherwise account for the giant leap in performance we saw here today. In fact, his 10km split between the 5km and 15km marks was faster than he has ever run for 10km on the track. Perhaps the course was slightly short? As someone who follows elite running extremely closely, I highly doubt this record was legitimate. These massive time drops typically indicate something is off.