Athletics News

Samuwei Mailu wins the 40th Vienna City Marathon in 2:05.08!

Samuwei Mailu wins the 40th Vienna City Marathon in 2:05.08!

After Vienna course record Samwel Mailu vows to help Kenyan talents.

 

Samwel Mailu was glued to the TV screen in Kenya when in October 2019, his idol Eliud Kipchoge broke the two-hour marathon barrier in Vienna’s Prater Park. The sensational achievement made worldwide headlines. It was exactly on the same stretch of road in the Prater, where Samwel Mailu broke away from his remaining rivals on Sunday during the 40th Vienna City Marathon. “But I did not think about Eliud in this moment as I was not aware that it was exactly on this road where he was running in 2019,“ said Samwel Mailu. With around 10 kilometers left in the race, the 30-year-old went on to break the nine-year-old course record of the Vienna City Marathon with a time of 2:05:08 in warm conditions. 

 

Amazingly the final kilometer of the race was Samwel Mailu’s fastest on Sunday. Despite the final section of the Vienna City Marathon is less flat than the roads in the Prater Park, the Kenyan stormed through the 42nd kilometer in a breathtaking 2:44! This pace is much faster than Eliud Kipchoge ran in Vienna in 2019. While it was, of course, just one kilometer, it still indicates that there is much more to come from Samwel Mailu. “In the future I hope to be able to run 2:03 in the marathon and around 58 minutes in the half marathon,“ he said. Looking ahead to the autumn season Vienna’s winner added: “I would like to run one of the major races, and I would prefer a flat course like Berlin.“ Last autumn he ran his first marathon when he was entered as a pacemaker in Frankfurt. He carried on and finished second in 2:07:19.

 

“On Sunday, running in warm conditions suited me because I grew up in an area where it is warmer,“ said Samwel Mailu, whose parents are vegetable farmers. He grew up in a village called Ulawani, which is located not far from the Tanzanian border and Mount Kilimanjaro. He did not live in a high altitude and in contrast to many world-class athletes from Kenya, running to school did not form the basis for his career. “My school was just about one kilometer away from our home. I became interested in running when I saw my fellow pupils competing in school championships. I was 15 years old when I started training at primary school“, explained Samuel Mailu, who then moved to a different part of Kenya when he switched to high school. “There, I lived about even kilometers away from the school, but I often took the bike to get…

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