Lowering the marathon mark: Researcher says sub 2-hour record could be reduced by 5 minutes

Sawe, who arrived home to a hero’s welcome in Kenya on Wednesday, broke the previous mark held by his countryman, Kelvin Kiptum, who died in a car accident in February 2024.

Simon Angus of Melbourne's Monash University, who describes himself as a data scientist and economist, analyzes the historical progression of the men’s and women’s world marathon records. He first predicted in a 2019 research paper that the first sub 2-hour men's time wouldn't be achieved until 2032.

In 2023, he revised that prediction to March 2027. With the weekend times in London, Angus says with further modeling, a new benchmark could be 1 hour, 54 minutes – five minutes, 30 seconds faster than Sawe ran in London.

That kind of time would set a whole new benchmark.

“I think that should stand a very long test of time, I wouldn't expect this in my children's lifetime,” Angus told The Associated Press in an interview Thursday. "We could be running a different kind of marathon, at the hypothecial, theoretical limit.

“There could be rule changes . . . what kinds of material in the shoes or singlets, feedback technology. It's a tussle between technology advances and doping control."

Angus added that often the most-talented runners are able to take advantage of improving technologies.

“In trying to achieve a marathon world record, there are so many different areas of innovation,” Angus said. “There is a huge amount of money being spent on nutrition, training, shoe technology. What it means is that when someone puts their face a little bit in front, they get the benefit of those technological improvements."

Angus wrote in an analysis published in The Conversation Australia this week that his " statistical framework " uses an assumption that, over time, performance gains become harder to achieve.

“Any of us who have aimed to improve on our local park run time will know all too well how hard it becomes to eke out more performance gains after the initial euphoria of the first week or two’s improvements is over,” he wrote.

A record also was established in the women’s race in London on Sunday, with Ethiopia’s Tigst Assefa winnnig in 2:15:41 to efend her title in the fastest-ever time in a women’s-only marathon.

Angus said that because there have been fewer women's-only marathons, it has been more difficult to publish data on them.

“Women’s times are in a gray space,” Angus said, but still predicted a time of 2 hours, 10 minutes — about five minutes faster than Assefa's time on Sunday — as one that eventually could be established.

The 47-year-old Angus is a married father of three who has run training marathons most recently in just under three hours.

He said he received word about the sub-2 hour London result — the time he predicted wouldn't happen initially for another six years — about 9 p.m. Sunday local time in Melbourne, just after the race finished.

“A friend texted and the first thing he said is ‘you are going to have a lot of work to do,’” Angus said. "I thought they'll break the world record but there's no way they'll do sub-2.

“Then I checked and thought, ‘now I probably need to get on to it.’”

AP sports: https://apnews.com/sports