Sifan Hassan impressively won the London Marathon on Sunday. In a rainy race she made her debut in the discipline with a time of 2:18:34. With that, the two-time Olympic champion set a Dutch record. The previous record was held by Nienke Brinkman, who ran 2.22.51 at the Rotterdam marathon last year. In recent months she has been preparing for her marathon debut on her own in Ethiopia at an altitude of 2,700 meters.
With the special performance, Hassan met the limit for participation in the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris. Despite the satisfactory result, her race seemed to be over after an hour. The thirty-year-old athlete suffered from her left upper leg. Twice she stopped to stretch. Nevertheless, Hassan was able to continue her race and catch up with the front runners.
Two kilometers from the finish, she controlled an acceleration of competitor Alemu Megertu and then took advantage of her speed in the last hundreds of meters. With a solid final sprint, she finally arrived first at The Mall, the final point of the race. She won with three seconds ahead of Megertu, Olympic champion Peres Jepchirchir came third at four seconds.