Marathon's World Record Has Been Shattered

Eliud Kipchoge has an Olympic gold medal in the marathon, and has clocked the fastest recorded time of 26.2 miles in an unratified race, but now he holds the official world record—and by quite a bit, coming in at 2 hours, 1 minute, 39 seconds in Sunday's Berlin Marathon. The previous record was 2:02:57, reports the Wall Street Journal, and the Berlin Marathon tweeted that such an improvement hadn't been seen in a half-century, per CNN. "The greatest marathon runner of all times," it tweeted. The 33-year-old Kenyan has won 10 of his 11 marathons, and last year fell 26 seconds short of a two-hour marathon in a Nike marketing event. The Berlin course has cemented itself as particularly fast, notes the Journal: The world record has fallen there seven times since the century's turn. (More marathon stories.)