Berlin Marathon: Assefa shatters world record and eclipses Kipchoge

A stratospheric performance: for her third completed marathon, the Ethiopian Tigst Assefa wrote a page in the history of athletics, improving the women's world record by more than two minutes to 2h11:53, a leap never seen since more than forty years. With this time, the fifth victory - also historic - of Eliud Kipchoge under the Brandenburg Gate is relegated to the background, the Kenyan nevertheless overtaking the Ethiopian Haile Gebrselassie in the list of fastest marathon on the planet.

In September 2022, while all eyes were on Kipchoge's world record of 2h01:09, Tigst Assefa, 26, had already caused a sensation under the Brandenburg Gate for his second marathon with a time of 2h15: 37, at the time the third time in history and the best brand on the streets of Berlin.

On Sunday, she put away Brigid Kosgei's world record of 2h14:04, which the Kenyan had established a little less than three years ago in Chicago. Such a progression of more than two minutes between two world records has been unprecedented since 1983.

For comparison, the Ethiopian ran faster than her legendary compatriot Abebe Bikila, who set the men's world record in 1964 in Tokyo, during his second Olympic title, the one he won with shoes after won barefoot in Rome four years earlier. “I didn't expect to run so fast, to go under 2h12,” admitted Assefa. “But it’s the result of hard work.”

Arriving in athletics via track, she first specialized in the 800 meters, with a personal best achieved in July 2014 in Lausanne in 1:59.24.

She qualified for the Rio Olympics in 2016 without making it out of the heats, before an Achilles tendon injury forced her to switch to the road, with her first races in 2018 over 10 kilometers, before to climb a half marathon and set a record of 1:07.28 in Germany in 2022, which did not place her in the 50 best performances that season.

With the Covid-19 pandemic, Assefa decided not to run and embarked on her first marathon in March 2022 in Riyadh, which she completed in 2h34:01. In the space of 18 months, she therefore improved her time by more than 22 minutes.

If, according to her profile on the international federation, she is 26 years old, sites specializing in athletics give her three years older.

With this performance, the athlete who trains on the heights of Addis Ababa (2,300 m above sea level) places herself as one of the big favorites for Olympic gold in Paris in a little over ten months, on a route, however, very hilly and totally different from that of Berlin, which is completely flat.

The 2024 Olympics remain Eliud Kipchoge's ultimate goal, where he hopes to overtake Bikila by achieving an unprecedented Olympic hat-trick. On Sunday, the 38-year-old Kenyan reassured himself, five months after his failure in Boston (sixth in the race in 2h09:23, more than three minutes behind the winner). Starting at a very high pace again (for around fifteen kilometers in times of less than two hours), Kipchoge certainly did not improve his world record but nevertheless won for the 5th time in Berlin.

In 2:02:42, he ran the eighth-fastest marathon in history (he holds five of the eight fastest times over 42.195 km). The challenge of the Olympic hat-trick promises to be perilous, with intensified competition, embodied by the emergence of his young compatriot Kelvin Kiptum, 23, who came within 16 seconds of Kipchoge's world record in London in April, and who will be at the start of the Chicago marathon on October 8.