Andreas Almgren Takes World Half-Marathon Gold in Copenhagen

Andreas Almgren became world half-marathon champion on Sunday, running 58:06 through the streets of Copenhagen and breaking Kenya’s Nicholas Kipkorir over the closing 600 meters to finish five seconds clear.

Stefano Baldini was the last European man to take this title, in Palma de Mallorca in 1996, in 1:01:17. Belgium’s Vincent Rousseau won it in 1993. Almgren is only the third European champion in the event’s history, and the first in 30 years.

Only eight men have ever run a faster half marathon, according to World Athletics. The European record Almgren beat, 58:41, was his own, set in Valencia last October.

Twelve years ago he was an 800m runner, third at the 2014 World Junior Championships in Eugene in 1:45.65. He moved up to the 5,000m and the 10,000m, took bronze over 10,000m at last year’s world championships in Tokyo, then won the European title at the distance in Birmingham in August. He holds the European record at 5,000m, at 10K on the road and, since Sunday, in the half-marathon.

Conner Mantz went to the front early. Almgren sat on him, with Japan’s Tomoya Ogikubo for company, and 3K came up in roughly 8:27. Kipkorir took it over before 5K, hit in 13:57, with two Kenyan compatriots, Gideon Rono and Daniel Ebenyo, and Almgren made no move to cover it, drifting back into the body of the group.

By 15K, passed in 41:47, the race was down to four: Kipkorir, Almgren, Joshua Cheptegei and Ethiopia’s Tadese Worku. Worku came off the back before 20K, which the other three reached in 55:20. Cheptegei was the next to go, dropped as the course turned back through Trianglen, and that left Kipkorir and Almgren alone for the run to the stadium, the Kenyan holding a narrow lead.

Almgren waited until the last of it, and Kipkorir could not go with him. “I felt extremely strong in the last few kilometres,” he said. “I did not only have one or two gears left, I had three or four, I felt like my opponents could try whatever they wanted but I was not going to let this gold medal go.”

Cheptegei was third, and his 58:26 is the quickest half marathon he has run. It is also the first global medal he has won on the roads. Everything else came on the track or over country: Olympic gold at 5,000m and 10,000m, three world 10,000m titles, the 2019 world cross-country crown. He ran Copenhagen on a left foot he hurt 10 days beforehand. “During the race, I struggled a bit with my left foot, which I hurt 10 days ago, but I had good treatment and I only felt a little bit of pain during the race,” he said.

Worku took fourth in a lifetime best of 58:35, with Rono fifth in 58:57 and Hani Idriss Hersi sixth, the Djiboutian lowering his national record to 59:09. Italy’s Yemaneberhan Crippa followed him home in 59:18. Kenya won the team standings, its scoring three adding up to 2:56:30, with Ethiopia second and the United States third. Mantz, who ran the American marathon record of 2:04:43 in Chicago last October, faded to 12th in 1:00:08.

Agnes Ngetich had already won the women’s race earlier in the morning, running 1:05:15 to take a second off the women-only world record Peres Jepchirchir set in Gdynia in 2020.

Almgren and Mantz both came to Copenhagen with New York on their minds, and Almgren runs his first marathon there on Nov. 1, where Mantz will line up too. “Ten years ago, we joked that maybe one day I would run a 5km race,” he said. “Now I am world champion in the half marathon and I am going to have my marathon debut in New York in about a month.”