What will it take for Indian marathoners to set a new record?
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. In 2004, Kenya’s Paul Tergat held the marathon world record with a timing of 2:04:55, which he had set in Berlin a year earlier. That was the year India witnessed its first serious mass participation road race — then called Standard Chartered Mumbai Marathon.
In the last two decades, the interest in distance running has grown manifold in India sprouting races and runners by the thousands across the country. Yet, India’s marathon national record stands unchallenged for about 50 years. Shivnath Singh set it in Jalandhar in 1978 with a timing of 2 hours 12 minutes.
Since then, better training, nutrition and new carbon shoes have propelled runners to new records, none more than Kenya’s Eliud Kipchoge, who set the world on fire running a sub-2-hour marathon under controlled conditions and held the world record till his compatriot Kelvin Kiptum bettered it with 2 hours and 35 seconds at the Chicago Marathon in October 2023. Of the current lot of Indian runners, Thonakal Gopi, an Olympian and past winner of the Tata Mumbai Marathon, is the fastest with a personal best of 2:13:39 achieved in Seoul in 2022. At the 20th Tata Mumbai Marathon on Sunday, while 60,000 runners raced through the city chasing personal records, Indian athletes couldn’t improve on the 1978 record.
Sunday’s conditions were not ideal for a fast race but international athletes easily ran faster times than the Indian national record; The Indian athletes came nowhere close to it. While the men’s race was won by Eritrea’s Berhane Tesfay in 2:11:44, Kenya’s Joyce Chepkemoi Tele won the women’s title in 2:24:56. The fastest Indian man was Anish Thapa with a time of 2:17.23, and Thakor Nirmaben retained her Tata Mumbai Marathon
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