The Bank of America Chicago Marathon serves as the penultimate race in Series XV of the Abbott World Marathon Majors, with Kelvin Kiptum finely poised to move into an unassailable lead in the men’s division.
The young Kenyan dazzled at the TCS London Marathon in April, clocking 2:01:25 to move into second on the all-time list.
The world watched as his countryman Eliud Kipchoge made his latest assault on his own world record two weeks ago on the streets of Berlin, but the great man could not lower the mark of 2:01:09 set in Germany in 2022.
It leaves the stage clear for Kiptum to attack the time again on a famously fast track. Victory would elevate him to 50 points in the series, with only Evans Chebet capable of matching him should he win in New York City in November. Victory in a world-record time would place him in the pantheon of modern era legends.
Little was known about the 23-year-old until he blazed his way to 2:01:53 in Valencia in 2022. When he backed it up in such spectacular style in London a few months later, it confirmed that here was a man who could potentially trade blows with Kipchoge in the final stanza of the marathon distance, and do so at an eye-watering speed.
We have yet to witness that head-to-head, but the intrigue has been ramping up all the same to see which of the world’s two fastest marathon runners can emerge with the plaudits from this phoney war of sorts during this fall Majors season.
We saw fallibility in Kipchoge in April when he struggled on the unfamiliar gradients in Boston. So far, any lack of experience on new courses has not proved Kiptum’s undoing.
He faces three former Chicago champions in Benson Kipruto, who won here last year, Seifu Tura, the 2021 champion, and 2017 victor Galen Rupp.
Kiptum’s PR is almost three minutes quicker than Kipruto’s, set in Chicago 12 months ago. Bashir Abdi (2:03:36) and Kinde Atanaw (2:03:51) are the only other men to have run below 2:04 in the field. With that kind of talent on show, Dennis Kimetto’s 2:03:45 course record set ten years ago must be under serious threat.
The men’s world record has not been set in Chicago this century. Khalid Khannouchi was the last man to do it in 1999 when he ran 2:05:38. How times have changed, literally.
It’s a long wait for a course known to be flat and fast. Early fears about high temperatures have dissipated this week, with highs of 28ºC on Wednesday giving way to 15ºC by race day, and it will be considerably cooler than that in the early morning when the race gets underway.
A personal tradition of race director Carey Pinkowski on marathon morning is to stroll out of the race hotel and take in the dawn air, removing his jacket to get a feel for what the day will bring.
As he inhales on the morning of October 8, he may well pick up the scent of history in the making.
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