News Archive

The real,- BERLIN-MARATHON once again retained its excellent position among the

rankings for races over the classic distance of 42,195 km last year. In the

table of the fastest marathon runs worldwide, which is calculated from the

average of the 10 best male results, only Chicago beats Berlin.

In the meantime, the Americans achieved an average time of 2:07:03,6 hours,

which means that Chicago is 11.2 seconds ahead of the real,- BERLIN-MARATHON.

There is a similar difference between Berlin (2:07:14,8) and the third-placed

Rotterdam Marathon (2:07:25,2). Tokyo, Boston and London follow.

In the world ranking for last year the winner and runner-up of the real,-

BERLIN-MARATHON 2000 are at positions 8 and 9. Simon Biwott (Kenya) won the

race in 2:07:42 hours, five seconds ahead of Antonio Pena from Spain. Jackson

Kabiga (Kenya/2:09:51) who was third in Berlin is also among the 50 best

marathon runners of the year 2000.

Whilst the winner of the London Marathon, Antonio Pinto (Portugal), remained

the best marathon runner of the year worldwide (2:06:36), the largest marathon

of the year was again disappointing as far as top results were concerned. There

were no New York results in the top 50. As expected, world class results were

achieved in Chicago in October (Khalid Khannouchi won in US record time of

2:07:01), and at the beginning of December Atsushi Fujita from Japan ran a

surprising 2:06:51 in the Fukuoka-Marathon - a new record for Asia. He improved

the record set by his fellow runner from Japan Takayuki Inubushi at the

BERLIN-MARATHON in 1999 by six seconds.

The start shortly before the Olympic Games last year proved difficult for

the organisers of the real,- BERLIN-MARATHON. As expected, this led to weaker

results among the women. The winner of the womens race in Berlin, Kazumi Matsuo

is ranked 21st in the list of world best times last year with 2:26:15. The

womens world record set by Tegla Loroupe from Kenya in Berlin in 1999 (2:20:43)

was not broken again.