Kenya’s Sabastian Sawe, who last month became the first man to run a marathon in under two hours in \u200ban official race, will attempt to improve on \u200cthat record on one of the world’s fastest courses at the Berlin Marathon in September, organisers said on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
The 31-year-old, who ran \u200bthe London Marathon in one hour, 59 minutes and \u200b30 seconds, will return to competition when he \u2060defends his Berlin title on September 27.<\/p>\n
“After my victory \u200bin London and my sub-two-hour performance, I can only say \u200bthat I will as always prepare as well as possible, come to Berlin to honour this great event and the organisation that invited \u200bme, and aim to run as well and as \u200bfast as I can,” Sawe said in a statement.<\/p>\n
The Berlin Marathon’s flat \u200ccourse \u2060is regarded as one of the quickest in the world, with nine men’s world records being set at the event between 1998 and 2022.<\/p>\n
Sawe finished the Berlin Marathon\u00a0in two \u200bhours, two minutes \u200band 16 \u2060seconds in 2025, clocking the world’s best time of the year despite temperatures reaching up \u200bto 25 degrees Celsius.<\/p>\n
His compatriot Eliud Kipchoge still \u200bholds \u2060the course record, having clocked 2:01:09 in 2022 to set a previous world record.<\/p>\n
“We\u2019ll see what happens on race day,” \u2060Sawe \u200bsaid.<\/p>\n
Organisers said the 2026 edition of \u200bthe Berlin Marathon is expected to attract almost 60,000 athletes from around 160 \u200bcountries.<\/p>\n
–Reuters–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":33042,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"news-type":[20],"class_list":["post-34401","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-sport","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"His compatriot Eliud Kipchoge still \u200bholds \u2060the course record, having clocked 2:01:09 in 2022 to set a previous world record.","published_date":"","news_description":"His compatriot Eliud Kipchoge still \u200bholds \u2060the course record, having clocked 2:01:09 in 2022 to set a previous world record.","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/34401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/34401\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34402,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/34401\/revisions\/34402"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=34401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}