American-Born Yaseen Abdalla Runs Faster Than the U.S. Half-Marathon Record for Sudan

Yaseen Abdalla ran 59:12 at the Valencia Half Marathon on Sunday, a time that beats Conner Mantz’s American record by five seconds and will still never appear in the U.S. record books. Abdalla was born in the United States and grew up running in Austin, Texas, but at international level he runs for Sudan, where his parents come from, a detail LetsRun was quick to point out after the race.

The 25-year-old finished eighth behind Rodrigue Kwizera, whose winning 58:03 has a record problem of its own: it was three seconds under Andreas Almgren’s European record, but it cannot count as one until World Athletics approves Kwizera’s switch from Burundi to Spain. Twelve men broke the hour in Valencia, and Abdalla’s run now sits 29th on World Athletics’ 2026 list.

USATF’s competition rules define an American record, under Rule 261, as the best mark by an athlete who, at the time of the performance, “is a citizen of the United States and is eligible to represent the United States in all levels of international competition.” Abdalla meets the first condition and not the second, having raced for Sudan at the Olympic Games and at the World Championships.

So the record stays with Mantz, who ran 59:17 in Houston in January 2025 and took 26 seconds off the 59:43 Ryan Hall had held since 2007. The closest anyone eligible has come since is Alex Maier, whose 59:23 on the same Houston course this January was still 11 seconds slower than Abdalla’s run in Valencia, according to LetsRun’s results. The first man across the line in Valencia running for the U.S. was Chandler Gibbens, 25th in 1:01:43.

Abdalla walked on at the University of Texas in 2019 and anchored the Longhorns to the NCAA indoor distance medley relay title in 2022, before moving on to Tennessee and then Arkansas. His last college season produced the two Sudanese records that still head his World Athletics profile, 7:34.17 for 3,000m in December 2024 and 13:09.99 for 5,000m two months later, both indoors.

Sudan’s Olympic committee gave him its universality place in the marathon at the 2024 Paris Games, which meant his first race over 26.2 miles came at the Olympics. He finished 33rd in 2:11:41, as Austin Fit Magazine recounted in a profile in May. A year later he was 21st at the World Championships in Tokyo in 2:13:32. He races without a major shoe sponsor and has started a coaching company and his own apparel brand, Kairos.

Zouhair Talbi, who races Mantz at the New York City Marathon on Nov. 1, has come at the same rule from the opposite direction. Born in Morocco, he became a U.S. citizen in 2025 through the Army Reserve and ran 2:03:45 at Boston in April, a time no American has ever bettered over 26.2 miles, though on a course that is not record-eligible. Because he raced for Morocco as recently as 2024, he cannot run for the U.S. in international championships until August 2027, and by the wording of Rule 261 none of his marks can count as American records before then either.

“Where I see my future in the marathon is running some of the fastest times ever,” Abdalla told Austin Fit in May, five months before Valencia.