Kipchoge, Vienna 2019: Under 2 Hours, but Not a Record
Kipchoge's sub 2 hour marathon happened on Saturday, October 12, 2019, in Vienna. Eliud Kipchoge runs behind an electric car that projects a green laser onto the road. One hour, fifty-nine minutes and forty seconds later, he has done what nobody had done. And yet the record book noted nothing.
By the PacePoster desk · · 3 min · 14 sources
01Twenty-five seconds
Go back to May 6, 2017. At Monza, on the Formula 1 circuit, it is the Breaking2 attempt: three runners and pacers who take turns. Kipchoge finishes the marathon in 2:00:25. He is 25 seconds short. That time could not count as a record: the pacers were entering and leaving along the way.
Two years later the Kenyan is back. This time the setting is tailor-made for him.
02The Kipchoge sub 2 hour marathon: a park, a straight avenue, a laser
The challenge is called the INEOS 1:59 Challenge. The course fits almost entirely inside the Prater, the big park in Vienna: 4.4 laps of the Hauptallee, a straight, flat, tree-lined avenue with a roundabout at each end for the turnaround. In front of Kipchoge, an electric car projects a green beam on the ground, set to 2:50 per kilometer. The pacers lock onto it.
How many are there? 41 pacers according to World Athletics, split into nine teams, among the best runners in the world. CBS Sports counts 36. The teams take turns and form a V in front of Kipchoge.
I am the happiest man in the world to be the first human to run under two hours
031:59:40
At the finish, the clock reads 1:59:40, and two tenths. An average of 2 min 50 s per kilometer, held from start to finish. Metronome consistency.
“I am the happiest man in the world to be the first human to run under two hours,” he says, according to the World Athletics report. He compares himself to Roger Bannister, the first man under four minutes in the mile in 1954, and says he expects to see other runners go under two hours.
04Why the record book ignores it
It is not a world record, and World Athletics said so right away. It was not a race open to other competitors. And the pacers, who were not running their own race, came in and out at fixed intervals: the rules do not allow it. His drinks, meanwhile, came to him by bicycle rather than from aid stations, notes the site Marathon Handbook.
So that day his official record stayed at 2:01:39, from Berlin 2018.
The wall eventually fell in an official race. On April 26, 2026, Sabastian Sawe won the London Marathon in 1:59:30, the first time under 2 hours in a record-eligible event. Behind him, Yomif Kejelcha also went under the mark. World Athletics ratified the record in July. Kipchoge had shown in 2019 that it was possible.
Sources for this story (14)
Every fact was cross-checked in at least two independent sources. Where they disagree, the story says so.
- Eliud Kipchoge breaks two hours in Vienna — World Athletics (2019)
- Kipchoge becomes first athlete to run a marathon under two hours — CBS Sports (2019)
- INEOS 1:59 Challenge — site officiel
- Introducing Eliud Kipchoge's 41-person team of INEOS 1:59 pacers — Canadian Running (2019)
- Why Kipchoge's sub-2 never counted — Marathon Handbook (Jessy Carveth, 2026)
- Sawe wins London Marathon, first man under two hours — Sky Sports (2026)
- Sawe breaks two-hour barrier with 1:59:30 world record at London Marathon — World Athletics (26 avril 2026)
- Ratified : world records for Sawe, Ehammer, Charlton… — World Athletics (23 juillet 2026)
- London Marathon 2026 : Sawe breaks marathon world record — ESPN (2026)
- It's Official : Sawe's sub-two and Assefa's record are now in the books — Marathon Handbook (23 juillet 2026)
- Eliud Kipchoge runs 2:00:25 in Breaking2 attempt — Athletics Weekly (2017)
- Kipchoge a « happy man » in Monza — World Athletics (2017)
- Strecke et Mythos Hauptallee — Vienna City Marathon (organisateur)
- A well-orchestrated event — AIMS, Distance Running (2013)
Read next
The whole journal →
No. 34Berlin 1974: The Marathon Born in the Forest
Berlin Marathon history begins on October 13, 1974, when 286 runners gather outside a stadium in Charlottenburg for a race nobody is expecting. A chalk line on the asphalt, a forest, and a pastry baker with bigger dreams. Fifty years later, it is the race of 13 world records.
No. 39The First Women's Olympic Marathon: Joan Benoit, Los Angeles 1984
The first women's Olympic marathon was run on August 5, 1984, in Los Angeles, with 50 women on the start line. Joan Benoit, who had knee surgery that spring, breaks away in the first kilometers and is never caught. Behind her, a Swiss runner writes another page, in tiny steps.