Courtesy: Google
Jacob Kiplimo, the Ugandan runner, broke the world record in the men’s half marathon by a whopping 48-second margin in Barcelona on Sunday, February 16, and it also helped him become the first athlete to register a time below 57 minutes. The 24-year-old completed the 21.0975km race in 56 minutes and 42 seconds, to smash the previous world record set by Ethiopian Yomif Kejelcha of 57:30 in Valencia last October.
Notably, with this stunning performance on the racing track in Spain, Jacob Kipilimo managed to put together the best single time improvement in the half marathon in athletics history, to beat his compatriot Geoffrey Kamworor in second place (58:44) and Kenya's Samuel Mailu in third place (59:40). He also has the world record for 15km race during the World Athletics event recently, but it was held in perfect conditions of 13ºC with no wind.
I am very excited about what I did today: Jacob Kiplimo
After breaking the world record in the half marathon, Jacob Kiplimo, the former 10,000m Olympic and World Championships bronze medallist, gave his first reaction, wherein he spoke about being excited about his performance on the race track. He was quoted as saying, as per BBC Sport, “I am very excited about what I did today. I wanted to have a great race, but I didn't expect to break the world record.”
“I started very strong in the first two kilometres to get away from my rivals. As the kilometres passed and I saw that I was going at record pace, I told myself that I had to maintain that pace no matter what it took,” he added. Earlier in the same day, Toshikazu Yamanishi of Japan broke the world record in men’s 20km race walk by clocking in a time of 01:46:10, to beat the previous mark set by Yusuke Suzuki, his fellow countryman in 2015.
