Athletics · 2019 · Vienna, Austria
Breaking the Two-Hour Marathon Barrier
A Kenyan marathon runner becomes the first person to cover 26.2 miles in under two hours, at an event engineered around that single question.
1:59:40.2
Time
12 October 2019
Date
~2:50/km
Average pace
The INEOS 1:59 Challenge was not a conventional race. There was no field to beat and no prize money, and no official world record was on offer either, because a rotating team of pacemakers and a pace car projecting laser lines onto the road put the whole thing outside competition rules. It existed to answer one question: whether a human being could run a marathon in under two hours.
On a flat loop course in Vienna's Prater park on 12 October 2019, Eliud Kipchoge answered it, finishing in 1:59:40.2. That is an average of roughly 2 minutes 50 seconds per kilometre, held for over 26 miles. It was his second attempt at the barrier, after falling 25 seconds short at a similar event in Monza in 2017.
The pacing support meant the time could never be eligible as an official world record, and that mark still belongs to his own run in open competition. Vienna settled the other question, the one about the outer edge of human endurance, which is why it sits alongside Bannister's four-minute mile.
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