Eliud Kipchoge Wins the Melbourne Marathon With a Course Record

Eliud Kipchoge won the Melbourne Marathon on Sunday in 2:09:10, taking two seconds off the course record and winning a marathon for the first time in three years.

The two-time Olympic champion went through halfway in 1:04:19 with a small group still around him, then pushed on a little before 27K. His split from 25K to 30K, 15:05, was the quickest 5K of his race, and it broke the group apart. Jimmy Whelan, the Melbourne-born former pro cyclist who was running his first marathon, was the last man to hold on. The last 15K was a solo run, and Australia’s Thomas Do Canto came through for second in 2:10:35, as Australian Associated Press reported.

The record was decided at the very end. Kipchoge passed 40K in 2:02:14, which left him just under seven minutes for the last 2.2K if he wanted to beat the 2:09:12 that Kenya’s Timothy Kiplagat Ronoh ran in 2022. The race finishes with a half-lap inside the Melbourne Cricket Ground, and Kipchoge used some of it to wave up at the stands, giving away a few of the seconds he had to spare. After the finish he went to the fence to meet the crowd and stayed there a while.

“Today was such a special day, not only running my third World Tour, but also winning in a new race record,” Kipchoge said, in comments reported by Athletics Illustrated. “Thank you, Melbourne.”

His First Win Since Berlin in 2023

Melbourne is the 17th marathon win of Kipchoge’s career and his first since his fifth Berlin title in September 2023, when he ran 2:02:42. In the three years between, he finished 10th in Tokyo in 2024 and did not finish the Paris Olympic marathon that August. In 2025 he placed sixth in London, ninth at Sydney’s first race as a Major, and 17th in New York.

His world tour, a plan to race a marathon on every continent, started this year in Cape Town, where he was 16th in 2:13:29 in May. In July he was 12th in Porto Alegre, nearly 10 minutes behind Morocco’s Zineddine Ouria. Melbourne, the Oceania stop, is the first race on the tour he has won.

A Faster Course, and a Record Within Reach

Organizers rebuilt the course for this year, cutting about 20 percent of the total climbing, taking out the hill near 36K and reducing the number of turns. Race organizer Marcus Gale had said before the race that the changes could bring Ronoh’s record into play. Kipchoge kept his own target vague, saying he wanted to “run a beautiful race,” though he left no doubt about what he was in Melbourne for. “I come here to win, I come here to inspire people, I come here to tell people to come out of their homes and run,” he said in the days before the start.

New Zealand’s Camille French won the women’s race in 2:28:25. Sinead Diver, the Australian who has held the women’s course record of 2:25:19 since 2018, was second in 2:28:49.

Kipchoge’s tour now moves on to Europe, North America, Asia and Antarctica, with all four stops planned for 2027. No races or dates have been announced for any of them.