\n
An injured Tigst Assefa hobbled over the line at the Berlin Marathon on Sunday after looking set to smash the women’s world record.<\/b><\/p>\n
The Ethiopian still won with the third-fastest time in history in two hours 11 minutes four seconds.<\/p>\n
But the 29-year-old, a silver medallist at the Paris Olympics two years ago, had been cruising to a new record before fading in the final stages. <\/p>\n
Kenyan athlete Ruth Chepngetich’s time of 2:09:56, set at the 2024 Chicago Marathon, remains the world record time, though that result is overshadowed by the three-year doping ban she received in 2025.<\/p>\n
Assefa, the 2026 London Marathon winner, started rapidly and led the field by a minute at the 15km mark. She was ahead of the record pace at 35km and is a renowned fast finisher – but began to suffer clear discomfort and her pace slowed.<\/p>\n
However she still broke the Berlin course record of 2:11:53 that she set in 2023 – which was also her previous personal best.<\/p>\n
In addition, she improved on her time of 2:15:41 at the London Marathon earlier this year.<\/p>\n
“We have to bow our heads to this performance. She was on a world record course for most of the race but then something happened to her tendon,” said race director Mark Milde.<\/p>\n
“To finish like this, I’ve never seen something like this. The pain is hard to imagine.<\/p>\n
“With a heavy heart, we saw her set a course record, but it could have been a lot more.”<\/p>\n
The top five finishers were all from Ethiopia, with Bedatu Hirpa second and Dera Dida third.<\/p>\n
Guye Adola – another Ethiopian – won the men’s race with a time of 2:02:50.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An injured Tigst Assefa hobbled over the line at the Berlin Marathon on Sunday after looking set to smash the women’s world record. The Ethiopian still won with the third-fastest time in history in two hours 11 minutes four seconds. But the 29-year-old, a silver medallist at the Paris Olympics two years ago, had been […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":130885,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/basketball.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130884"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/basketball.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/basketball.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/basketball.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/basketball.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=130884"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/basketball.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130884\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/basketball.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/130885"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/basketball.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/basketball.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/basketball.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}