Kiplagat out to defend world title in Tokyo
.jpg)
Reading Time: 2min | Wed. 03.09.25. | 18:43
Vincent Ngetich headlines Kenya’s men’s marathon team as the country looks to reclaim a title last won in 2017 by Geoffrey Kirui
Commonwealth Games champion Victor Kiplagat headlines Uganda's marathon team to the 2025 Tokyo World Championship set to begin on Saturday, 13 September.
Kiplagat, the reigning champion having won the title in 2023, continuing a global dominance that had started when he won the World Mountain Running Championships in 2017 as a teenager, will look to go back-to-back.
Follow our WhatsApp channel for more news
Should he succeed in handing Ugandan her third world marathon men's title, the first having come from Stephen Kiprotich in Moscow, 2013, Kiplagat will join a special club of runners who have won back-to-back titles.
Spain's Abel Anton (1997, 1999), Morocco's Jaouad Gharib (2003, 2005) and Abel Kirui (2009, 2011) are the only three athletes to have achieved the feat.
If the men's championship record of 2:05:36, set by Olympic champion Tamirat Tola in 2022, is to be challenged this year, the 25-year-old is definitely a front runner for the feat.
With a personal best (PB) time of 2:05:09 from 2022, the same year he won gold medal at the Commonwealth Games, despite taking a wrong turn close to the end of the course, Kiplagat faces a herculean task, especially against Kenyan and Ethiopian rivals.
From a young age, however, Kiplagat has proven one not to shy away from challenges. In 2017, he led home a Ugandan clean sweep of the podium in the senior men’s race at the World Mountain Running Championships in Italy.
The Ugandan maintained his development as an age-group athlete finishing sixth in the 10,000m at the 2018 World U20 Championships in Tampere, Finland.
In 2019 he built up more experience over the half marathon distance, winning team bronze and finishing 16th behind his half-brother Jacob Kiplimo, who struck gold, at the 2020 World Half Marathon Championships in Gdynia, Poland.
In 2021, he was ready to step up to the marathon and made his debut in Istanbul where he won the race in 2:10:18.
To achieve his current PB in Hamburg Marathon in April 2022, he scalped more than five minutes from his previous mark.
After winning the Commonwealth Games title in Birmingham, he went on to finish second in Osaka, running 2:06:03, before producing another stunning run to win the world title in 2:08:53.
.jpg)
