List Of The Most Successful Male Marathon Runners Of All Time

List Of The Most Successful Male Marathon Runners Of All Time: Athletics is all about running against time, and the marathon is the one requiring the most endurance. From Olympic Games to World Marathon championships, world record holders to major city race winners, the marathon has produced some of the most iconic sportspersons in the world. 

Let us have a look at some of the most successful male marathon runners in history at the 26.2-mile distance.

Eliud Kipchoge

Eliud Kipchoge is considered as one of the greatest marathon runners of all time. He is the only man to hold both the official and unofficial marathon world records.

Kipchoge is the 2016 and 2020 Olympic marathon champion, making him only the third man in history to clinch two Olympic titles. He was the world record holder in the marathon from 2018 to 2023. The Kenyan has run four of the 10 fastest marathons in history.

 

No other man has come close to the two-hour barrier for the marathon, which he broke in 2019 for an unofficial record. 

His incredible feats also include a seven-year unbeaten record that stretched over 11 races. Kipchoge, a 2019 Chicago marathon champ, is also a three-time London and Berlin Marathon winner. 

However, Kipchoge failed to finish the marathon for the first time in his career when defending his gold medal at the 2024 Paris Olympics after which he announced that he would not be running in the future. 

Haile Gebrselassie

Haile Gebrselassie is regarded as one the greatest marathon runners in history, with multiple titles and world records.

Gebrselassie won Olympic gold medals on two occasions over 10,000m and made his debut at the marathon distance in London in 2002, finishing third.

But the Ethiopian was most successful in Berlin where he started five times, won four, and broke the world record there twice.

Abebe Bikila

Abebe Bikila was an iconic marathon runner. The Ethiopian pounded the cobblestones running barefoot to win the gold medal in world record time at the Rome 1960 Olympics. 

His finishing time from Rome 1960 still stands as a Guinness World Record: “The fastest marathon run in bare feet is 2 hour 15 minutes 16.2 sec at the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome, Italy, on 10 September 1960.”

 

It was the first time a Black African had topped the 42.195km race at the Games. Bikila became the first runner to win two Olympic marathons by winning another gold at Tokyo 1964 in yet another world record win.

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Waldemar Cierpinski

Waldemar Cierpinski matched Bikila’s two Olympic marathon gold medals to become one of the legendary marathon runners. He was an unknown going into his first 1976 Olympics in Montreal where he secured a gold. 

The erstwhile East German successfully defended his Olympic title at the Moscow 1980 Games.