Mark Kiptoo runs 2:15 at Frankfurt to break a 35-year-old M50 world record
Kenya's Mark Kiptoo, 50, ran the Frankfurt Marathon in the low 2:15s to smash Titus Mamabolo's 1991 M50 world record by over four minutes.
Photograph: Marie-Lan Nguyen, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons (2014 Paris Marathon)Mark Kosgei Kiptoo, who turned 50 in June, finished 13th overall at Sunday's Mainova Frankfurt Marathon and shattered the M50 marathon world record in the process. Marathon Handbook and Canadian Running both reported his time as 2:15:24; Athletics Illustrated had it at 2:15:13. Either way, he beat the previous mark by more than four minutes. That record, 2:19:29, belonged to South Africa's Titus Mamabolo and had stood since the 1991 South African championships in Durban.
The run came a month after Kiptoo had already lowered the M50 half marathon world record to 1:03:57 in San Sebastian. He debuted at the marathon distance at Frankfurt back in 2013, running 2:06:16, and set the M40 masters world record there in 2018 with 2:07:50. Sunday's race, run in heavy rain, was his sixth appearance at the event.
World Masters Athletics still has to ratify the mark before it is official, the standard process for any masters world record. Jirata Dinki won the men's elite race in 2:05:26.
Kiptoo has now held a masters world record in two different age categories at two different distances within a single year. That is not a fluke. It is a career winding down slower than anyone expected.
Sources: Marathon Handbook; Canadian Running Magazine; Athletics Illustrated.
