Yomif Kejelcha – the man who also broke marathon’s sub-two hour barrier

Yomif Kejelcha played a huge part in running history on Sunday at the London Marathon with the greatest-ever performance on debut at the distance.

Nearly all the headlines may have been made by Kenya’s Sabastian Sawe as he became the first person in history to run a marathon in race conditions in under two hours.

But Kejelcha’s role shouldn’t be underestimated – and here’s why.

Competition proves crucial

The Ethiopian was the only person able to stay with Sawe and they were neck and neck at the 40km point, going through in 1:53:39, 21 seconds ahead of Jacob Kiplimo in third.

Both had clocked a fastest-of-the race split of 13:42 for the previous 5km and Kejelcha was then able to handle the extra injection of pace approaching Buckingham Palace, the two of them pushing each other to never-before-seen heights.

It was only in the closing stages that Sawe was finally able to put daylight between them – yet Kejelcha stayed on brilliantly himself to become the second person to break the mythical two-hour mark in 1:59:41.

Sawe was quick to praise him for being hart of history too, saying: “Yomif was so competitive and I think he helped a lot.”

Chris Brasher and Chris Chataway went down in history for helping Sir Roger Bannister become the first person to go under four minutes for the mile and Kejelcha was similarly influential here.

Half marathon records

And his performances at shorter distances suggested something special was in the offing.

He is the former world record for the half marathon, with the 57:30 time he set at the 2024 Valencia Half Marathon still the second fastest in history.

Kejelcha also held the world record for the short track mile (3:47:01) from 2019 to 2025, and is the fourth fastest 5,000M runner in history with a personal best of 12:38:95.

He won silver medals on the track over 10,000m at the 2019 and 2025 World Championships.

And now he’s set an incredibly high bar for the fastest marathon debut and his splits were as follows:

Split	Cumulative time	Split time	min/km	km/h
5K	00:14:14	14:14	02:51	21.08
10K	00:28:37	14:23	02:53	20.88
15K	00:43:10	14:33	02:55	20.61
20K	00:57:21	14:11	02:51	21.16
Half	01:00:29	03:08	02:52	20.98
25K	01:11:41	11:12	02:53	20.90
30K	01:26:03	14:22	02:53	20.89
35K	01:39:57	13:54	02:47	21.58
40K	01:53:39	13:42	02:45	21.90
Finish	01:59:41	06:02	02:45	21.79