2026 Chicago Marathon Elite Field: Jacob Kiplimo

Jacob Kiplimo has run three marathons and stood on the podium after every one of them. The Ugandan won the Chicago Marathon last October in 2:02:23, only his second race at the distance, and he returns on Oct. 11 as the defending champion and the fastest man in the field by more than a minute.

He has packed a great deal into 2026 already. In January he won a third straight world cross-country title in Tallahassee, in March he ran 57:20 in Lisbon for a half-marathon world record, and in April he ran 2:00:28 in London, a Ugandan record and the third-fastest marathon in history. He is 25 and turns 26 a month after Chicago.

Jacob Kiplimo at a Glance

Profile

• Country: Uganda
• Born: Nov. 14, 2000, in Kween District
• Marathons run: 3 (one win, three podiums)

Personal Bests

• Marathon: 2:00:28 (London, April 2026), Ugandan record
• Half-marathon: 56:42 (Barcelona, Feb. 2025), not ratified as a world record
• 10,000m: 26:33.93 (2021)
• 5,000m: 12:40.96 (Oslo, May 2024)

Marathon Results

• London 2025: 2nd, 2:03:37 (debut)
• Chicago 2025: 1st, 2:02:23
• London 2026: 3rd, 2:00:28

Championship Medals

• Olympic Games: 10,000m bronze (Tokyo, 2021)
• World Championships: 10,000m bronze (Eugene, 2022)
• World Cross-Country Championships: senior gold (2023, 2024, 2026)
• World Half-Marathon Championships: gold (Gdynia, 2020)
• Commonwealth Games: 5,000m and 10,000m gold (Birmingham, 2022)

World Records

• Half-marathon, 57:31 (Lisbon, Nov. 2021): broken by Yomif Kejelcha, who ran 57:30 in Valencia in October 2024
• Half-marathon, 57:20 (Lisbon, March 2026): ratified Sept. 3, 2026, and still the official record, but Kejelcha has since run 56:51 in Buenos Aires (Aug. 23, 2026), which will replace it once ratified

From Mount Elgon to Tuscany

Kiplimo grew up in Kween District, on the slopes of Mount Elgon in eastern Uganda, one of four brothers who would all go on to run internationally. Giuseppe Giambrone, an Italian coach, found the brothers there in October 2015, when Kiplimo was 14, and the next year moved them to his training camp at San Rocco a Pilli, outside Siena, Athletics Weekly reported in a profile of those early years.

Near the end of a one-hour progressive run on a hilly Tuscan loop in April 2016, only a few months after he arrived, the teenager ran each of the last two kilometers in 3:01, and Giambrone came away thinking about the marathon. “I spoke with people and said in the future 1:58, 1:59 in the marathon is possible but Jacob was only 15 years old,” Giambrone told the magazine.

That summer, still 15, Kiplimo ran the 5,000m heats at the Rio Olympics as the youngest member of Uganda’s team. His half-brother Victor Kiplangat won the world marathon title in Budapest in 2023, and another brother, Oscar Chelimo, took 5,000m bronze at the 2022 World Championships.

Track Medals and Cross-Country Titles

Kiplimo took bronze over 10,000m at the Tokyo Olympics and again at the 2022 World Championships in Eugene, Ore., where he finished just seven-hundredths of a second behind Kenya’s Stanley Mburu for silver. A few weeks later at the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham he won the 5,000m and the 10,000m, both times outkicking Kenyan runners over the last lap.

His 10,000m best of 26:33.93 dates from 2021, and he ran his 5,000m best of 12:40.96 for third place at the 2024 Bislett Games in Oslo.

Since 2023 he has won every senior men’s title at the World Cross-Country Championships: in Bathurst, Australia, in 2023, in Belgrade in 2024, and in Tallahassee in January, where he broke clear on the last lap and won in 28:18, a full 18 seconds ahead of Ethiopia’s Berihu Aregawi. It was the widest winning margin in the men’s race since 2007, and it made him only the fourth man to win three in a row, after John Ngugi, Paul Tergat and Kenenisa Bekele.

The Half-Marathon Records

Kiplimo won the world half-marathon title in Gdynia, Poland, in 2020, and a year later he broke the world record in Lisbon with 57:31. In February 2025 he ran 56:42 in Barcelona, which would have taken 48 seconds off Yomif Kejelcha’s record of the time. World Athletics refused to ratify it after ruling that sitting 10 to 15 meters behind the lead vehicle for much of the race had shielded him from the wind, which counts as illegal assistance.

He chose to go back to Lisbon for his next attempt, and on March 8, with no pacemakers, he ran with Kenya’s Nicholas Kipkorir to 15K, then pulled away over the next 5K and finished in 57:20, 10 seconds inside Kejelcha’s mark. “After the first 10km, I thought the world record was possible. I tried to keep pushing the pace in the final two kilometres,” he told World Athletics.

World Athletics ratified the record on Sept. 3. Kejelcha had already run 56:51 in Buenos Aires on Aug. 23, and that time is now going through the same process.

Three Marathons, Three Podiums

Kiplimo’s marathon debut came in London in April 2025, where he finished second in 2:03:37, 70 seconds behind Sabastian Sawe. Six months later he went to Chicago and won it.

The lead group there went through halfway in 1:00:16, on world record pace, and around 18 miles Kiplimo opened a gap on John Korir, the defending champion. He passed 30K in 1:25:31, the fastest 30K split ever run in a marathon, and although he slowed over the last 12K he won in 2:02:23, 91 seconds clear of Amos Kipruto, for the second-fastest time in the race’s history. “I didn’t know that I was inside the world record,” he said after the race, according to World Athletics.

In London this April he ran in the lead group through halfway in 1:00:29 and began to lose contact around 30K, where Sawe and Kejelcha moved clear. Sawe won in 1:59:30, the first sub-two-hour marathon in a record-eligible race, and Kejelcha ran 1:59:41. Kiplimo’s 2:00:28 in third was 1:55 faster than his Chicago win and seven seconds inside the world record Kelvin Kiptum set in Chicago in 2023. Kipruto finished fourth, one place behind him again, in 2:01:39.

What to Expect in Chicago

Kiplimo goes in as the clear favorite, since nobody else in the men’s field has broken 2:01, and his London time is already faster than the course record, Kiptum’s 2:00:35. Kipruto, the next-fastest entrant at 2:01:39, has finished one place behind him in both of their last two marathons, and Milkesa Mengesha (2:03:17) and Tadese Takele (2:03:23) lead a deep group of Ethiopians.

Chicago’s flat loop has only about 90 feet of elevation change, and it is where he ran that record 30K split last year. This fall he was left off Uganda’s team for the World Road Running Championships in Copenhagen so he could focus on Chicago, his coach, Peter Chelangat, told Xinhua. “Kiplimo has been preparing well and should be in top form for the race,” Chelangat said.

A course record would take 2:00:34 or better, and with the two-hour barrier broken in London, the clock will be watched almost as closely as the finish order. Kiplimo, for his part, has talked mostly about keeping his title.

“Winning Chicago was a special moment, but defending the title means even more,” he said when the field was announced in July. “My preparation has given me a lot of confidence, and having raced this course before is a real advantage.”

The professional races start in Grant Park at 7:30 a.m. CT on Sunday, Oct. 11.