Duncan Kibet of Kenya won this year’s Rotterdam Marathon
with a time of 2:04:27 hours. The only one to have run faster twice is
world record holder Haile Gebrselassie from Ethiopia: with 2:04:26 at his
world record race in Berlin in 2007 and 2:03:59 in Berlin in 2008. On
September 20th at the real,- BERLIN MARATHON, the two current fastest
marathon runners in the world will both try to run under the mark
Gebrselassie set here last year.
Kibet made his distance-running debut
by taking second place in the Vienna City Marathon in the spring of 2008
(2:08:33) followed by a victory half a year later at Milan (2:07:53). With
Kibet, the fastest marathoner this year, and Gebrselassie, the fastest
marathon runner ever, the real,- BERLIN MARATHON 2009 will be the venue
for the showdown of the two top contenders worldwide. The fast course
through the German capital has seen six world records since 1998,
including the last three men’s world records. In 2000, Naoko Takahashi of
Japan became the first woman to run a marathon under 2:20 hours with her
victory in Berlin. The real, BERLIN-MARATHON is a World Marathon Majors
race, which comprises of the five most important marathons in the world.