Marathoning is not a well-known sport. A lot of people think that it is boring to watch and just not exciting watching people run for 26.2 miles straight. People flock all over the country to run marathons in big cities like Chicago, New York, Berlin, Boston, Tokyo, London, and Sydney. These are the world’s major seven marathons. These are the ones that get the most hype from the running world and are where every marathoner strives to run. These races are very competitive because of the time required to qualify. People come in thousands to run at these races since they are the pinnacle, but only a select few can run in the top group of professional runners. These professional runners are those who get covered by the media and who are shown when they broadcast the races. The real question though is Who is the greatest Marthoner of all time?
I have only a few candidates for this title Clayton Young, Conner Mantz, Dennis Kipruto Kimetto, Eliud Kipchoge, and Kelvin Kiptum.
Sadly I do have to knock out Clayton Young and Conner Mantz just because they haven’t put up the times that these other men have put up. The only reason these two make my candidates is because I am a biased fan of them and they are the two current best in America for all of marathoning. While these two men can’t compete for the top they do have a great friendly rivalry for the best in America. Right now I feel that Conner Mantz holds the title for best in America since he won the United States Olympic trials, finished in front of Clayton Young in the 2024 Olympics, and beat Clayton in the New York City Marathon. However, these two are training partners with slightly different strategies that suit them in their competitions anyone of them can win on any given day.
The next runner I will mention is Dennis Kipruto Kimetto. While the numbers do show that he is one of the best marathon runners of all time I didn’t watch any of his races since I wasn’t big into marathioning when he was in his prime. Therefore this does eliminate him from contention for being my G.O.A.T. However he did hold the world record for the fastest marathon ever with a 2:02:57 at the 2014 Berlin marathon, but this got taken from him by another candidate.
This candidate is Eliud Kipchoge who ran the World Record for the fastest Marathon in 2022 with a time of 2:01:09 at the Berlin Marathon. This isn’t all Kipchoge has done in his career though. He won 2 gold medals in the Marathon at the 2016 Rio De Janeiro Olympics and the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. There is one problem with Kipchoge though: he doesn’t hold the world record anymore because that got stolen by our final candidate Kelvin Kiptum.
Kelvin Kiptum has the official world record for the marathon running it in Chicago in 2023 running a blistering 2:00:35. This isn’t the only world major he has won. He has also won the London Marathon in 2023. Kiptum burst onto the scene in 2023 and looked to be the greatest runner of all time since he was only 24 and still working towards his prime. Everyone thought that he would be the first person to ever officially run under 2 hours in a marathon since we have never seen a runner so dominant. However, he tragically passed away in 2024 at the age of 24 after a car accident in his home country of Kenya. This struck the running community by storm since it brought up the question of What if?
From all this, you can only have two candidates for this title of greatest marathoner Eliud Kipchoge and Kelvin Kiptum. In my personal opinion, I think Kelvin Kiptum could have been the greatest marathon runner ever but I just can’t give this title to him after one great season. I have to give this title to Eliud Kipchioge. The main reason I give it to Kipchoge is because he has gone sub 2 hours. While I said nobody has officially, Kipchoge has done it unofficially. In October 2019, Eliud Kipchoge was with a group of people on a challenge to see if anyone could run a sub-two-hour marathon since it had never previously been done. That day in October Kipchoge went out with pacers and a pacing car to get him to the mark of sub 2 which marks it “unofficial”. He ran a 1:59:40 which is the fastest recorded marathon time. Unofficial or not, that is impressive no matter what, and while he has done way more than just run under 2 hours once this helps his case to be the king of all marathon running.
