Jacob Kiplimo’s Chicago Title Defense Came Apart Over the Final 10K

Jacob Kiplimo arrived in Chicago as the defending champion and the third-fastest marathoner in history, and for most of Sunday morning he looked every bit of both. It was Kiplimo who broke the lead pack apart in the second half, and when he and Amos Kipruto reached 30K together in 1:25:28, they were on course record pace and a few seconds up on his own winning run from a year ago. The last 12K went very differently. Kipruto pulled away to win in 2:01:09, and Kiplimo drifted back through the field to finish fourth in 2:04:18, more than three minutes behind.

Six men ran together through halfway in 1:00:21, clicking off 5K splits within a second of each other, and nobody really pushed until after 20K. Kiplimo pressed again a little after 25K, according to World Athletics, and the 5K that followed took just 13:58, a touch quicker than world record pace. Kipruto was the only one who could go with him, and for a while it looked like a two-man race for a very fast time.

It was Kipruto, though, who had the stronger finish in him. He opened a 12-second gap by 35K, and over the next 5K Kiplimo’s race came apart. That stretch took him 16:32, roughly 5:19 per mile, and by mile 24 he was a minute and a half down. Tadese Takele, who had been 45 seconds behind him at 35K, came past for second, and Milkesa Mengesha caught him as well before the line. His second half took 1:03:57, more than three and a half minutes slower than his first.

He Faded Here Last Year Too

Anyone who watched Kiplimo win Chicago last October will recognize the pattern. He went through 30K that day in 1:25:31, faster than anyone had run that far in a marathon, and then slowed over the final 10K, which took him 29:39. He was so far clear by then that it only cost him a shot at the world record, and he still won by 91 seconds. This time he had company, and the same stretch took him 31:14, more than two minutes longer than Kipruto needed. It is the part of the race he had been working on. “The final 10km, I’m trying to improve it, to make sure I can finish strong,” he told the New York Times before the race, as quoted by Uganda’s Daily Monitor.

In London in April, his fastest marathon so far, Sabastian Sawe and Yomif Kejelcha did most of the pushing. Kiplimo sat in, was only two seconds behind them at 30K before they pulled away, and ran the second half in 59:59 to finish third in 2:00:28, still the third-fastest time in history. A year before that, on his debut, he had been second to Sawe on the same course in 2:03:37.

A Quieter Build

Kiplimo hadn’t raced at all since London, and for the first time in his marathon career he went into one without a half-marathon tune-up, the kind of race that had produced his 57:20 in Lisbon earlier this year. He told LetsRun at media day that he had made that call during the London race itself and that training had gone well. “When I see my training, it’s not like for London,” he told the Times. “I trust what we are doing.”

All week he steered questions toward defending his title, something no man has done in Chicago since Sammy Wanjiru in 2010, rather than whether he would try to go under two hours. The way he raced suggests the clock was on his mind too. At 30K, World Athletics had the pair on course for 2:00:12, with the rest of the field already 16 seconds behind. Kipruto, who was third here in 2024 and second last year, very nearly held that pace all the way home, running 1:00:48 for his second half.

Kiplimo hadn’t commented on the race by Sunday afternoon. He is still only 25, and after a personal best in each of his first three marathons, Sunday’s 2:04:18 is the first real setback of his marathon career.