Posted: March 29, 2005

Athletics: Joyce Chepchumba goes for record fifth win in Bewag BERLIN HALF MARATHON

Joyce Chepchumba is going for a record fifth win in the Bewag BERLIN HALF MARATHON next Sunday. The Kenyan is the defending champion and course record holder (68:22 in 2000). The 25th Bewag BERLIN HALF MARATHON will be her final test before the Flora London Marathon two weeks later. 34 year-old Joyce Chepchumba has won the Berlin race in 1999, 2000, 2001 and 2004.

A record number of about 18,000 athletes will compete in next Sunday’s event which will feature an inline skating event plus a short race of 3.5 k. About 15,000 athletes will run the Bewag BERLIN HALF MARATHON, which is the biggest and best quality race of its kind in Germany. About 100,000 spectators are expected to watch the jubilee edition of the race, which grew enormously in recent years. It was just seven years ago when there were little more than 3,500 athletes in the event. On Sunday there will be more than five times as many.

Though fellow Kenyans Mary Ptikany and Emily Kimuria will be in the race with Joyce Chepchumba the biggest rival could come from Germany: Luminita Zaituc who had been 18th in the Olympic Marathon in Athens will run this race for the first time. She has won a marathon silver medal in the European Championships in 2002 in Munich and has placed 6th in the ING New York City Marathon 2004.

While the Kenyan women will try to continue their Berlin win streak of already six first places in a row Kenyan men have dominated the Bewag BERLIN HALF MARATHON even more in recent years. During the last three years only one single athlete in the top ten did not come from Kenya: Janne Holmen (Finland) was 9th in 2003.

It could be similar on Sunday. Kenyan Patrick Ivuti is the fastest men in the field with a personal best of 59:45 minutes. With that time he is seven seconds quicker than the course record of the Bewag BERLIN HALF MARATHON, which was set by Fabián Roncero (Spain) in 2001 (59:52) and still stands as a European record. On the slightly downhill course in Lisbon Ivuti had run even 14 seconds faster. Other Kenyans to watch will be Joseph Ngolepus, the real,- BERLIN MARATHON champion from 2001, and Moses Kipkosgei Kigen. Olympic marathon silver medallist from 1996, Bong-ju Lee (South Korea), has also entered Sunday’s race.

Towards the end of his career Stephan Freigang has chosen to come back to Berlin. The German Olympic marathon bronze medallist from Barcelona 1992 ran both of his personal best times in Berlin: 61:14 minutes as winner of the BERLIN HALF MARATHON in 1992 and 2:09:45 in the BERLIN MARATHON in 1990, when he finished fourth.