The milestone was celebrated worldwide, not just by athletics fans. It was considered at the time to be a similar achievement to scaling Mount Everest for the first time, which Sir Edmund Hilary and Tenzing Norgay had done the year before.
On Sunday, Kenya’s Sabastian Sawe and Ethiopia’s Yomif Kejelcha achieved a breakthrough comparable to Bannister’s some 72 years ago: running the 42 kilometres of a marathon in less than two hours.
Kenya's Sabastian Sawe celebrates with a shoe after winning the men's elite race and setting a new world record with a time of 01:59:30 at the London Marathon on April 26, 2026.
Photo credit: Matthew Childs | Reuters
Sawe smashed the men’s world record by an astonishing 65 seconds in winning the event in 1 hour, 59 minutes and 30 seconds.
The race was blisteringly fast. Even third-place getter Jacob Kiplimo of Uganda broke the previous world record – set in 2023 by Kenya’s Kelvin Kiptum in the United States – by seven seconds (finishing in 2:00:28).
Sawe ran quicker as the marathon went on, covering the second half of the race in 59:01. He pulled clear of Kejelcha after about 30 kilometres and made his solo break in the final two kilometres.
Kenya's Sabastian Sawe celebrates with a shoe after winning the men's elite race and setting a new world record with a time of 01:59:30.
Photo credit: Reuters
After the race, Sawe said:
The training and nutrition
A two-hour marathon is run at such high intensity that carbohydrate intake becomes important to maintain performance. The body stores carbohydrate in the muscles and liver but those stores are limited .
According to his nutrition team , Sawe took a carbohydrate drink and a gel leading up to the start, then used carbohydrate drinks and gels throughout the race.
Although Sawe and Kejelcha’s laboratory data are not public, the physiology required to run a fast marathon is due to three main attributes :
an exceptional capacity to take in and use oxygen during running
the ability to maintain a high fraction of that capacity for prolonged periods
an exceptional running economy, which means using less oxygen at a given speed.
Exceptional marathon performances also depend on durability , which is the ability to prevent deterioration of these qualities throughout the race.
The Adios Pro Evo 3 combines several features common in supershoes: very low weight, thick resilient foam and a stiff carbon-based structure in the midsole. The heel thickness is reported to be 39 millimetres, just under the 40mm limit permitted by World Athletics .
Firstly, the foam and stiffening element can affect the “spring-like” bounce of the body as the foot hits and leaves the ground.
Secondly, they can change how the runner moves, including how the foot and ankle work, how long the foot stays on the ground, and the timing of energy return. As such, a shoe may be capable of storing and returning more energy, but the athlete still has to interact with it effectively.
The exact benefit of the Adios Pro Evo 3 over other supershoes has not been independently measured, but even small improvements are likely to be important over a marathon.
The conditions in London also likely contributed to these performances. While London is considered to be a relatively fast course (although not as fast as Berlin), the weather conditions were close to ideal: between 13-17°C during the race, which is at the upper end of the theoretical optimum for marathon running but within the range associated with fast endurance performance.
The best explanation for the performances in London is the convergence of many factors, including exceptional physiology, years of high-volume training, efficient biomechanics helped by the use of advanced footwear, optimised fuelling and favourable weather conditions.
Written by Mark Connick, Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the School of Exercise and Nutrition Sciences at Queensland University of Technology.
