Badvert information for anybody who secretly fancies themselves each time they lace up their trainers: the two-hour marathon file has gone. Sabastian Sawe’s astonishing effort on the London marathon on Sunday – cruising throughout the end line on the Mall in 1hr 59m 30s like a person who has simply jogged a parkrun – shattered a file lengthy seen as past human functionality.
“They said it couldn’t be done!” roared BBC commentator Steve Cram. And then, 11 seconds later, Yomif Kejelcha did it too – and he’d never even run a marathon earlier than.
Even Jacob Kiplimo in third got here shut to breaking probably the most talismanic athletic obstacles in historical past, beating the earlier world file but lacking the “sub two” by 28 seconds. The males’s two-hour marathon in race situations has been comprehensively done. Find your self a brand new problem.
Happily, people usually are not but omnipotent and some records and firsts – athletic and in any other case – remain to be achieved. Here are a couple of to encourage your subsequent sponsored problem.
The first Pacific swim
Yes, some individuals see this as an achievable aim, and one particular person has even tried it, if one adopts an elastic definition that permits for taking the world’s largest ocean in phases.
French swimmer Benoît Lecomte set off from Choshi in Japan in 2018 with a plan to swim 40 nautical miles (64km) a day till he hit San Francisco, resting at evening on his help boat. However, he was forced to give up after a mere 1,500 miles when the boat suffered irreparable harm.
Lecomte already claims a world first on swimming the Atlantic, after he crossed from Massachusetts to Brittany in northern France in 1998 (with every week off within the Azores midway via). Guinness World Records does not recognise the try, nevertheless, due to uncertainty over the gap he swam. The first circumnavigation of Great Britain, on the other hand, has formally occurred. (“It was brutal,” mentioned 33-year-old Ross Edgley on finally coming ashore in Margate in 2018.)
The 9-metre lengthy leap
Another close to miss, American Mike Powell’s world record long jump of 8.95 metres in 1991 has by no means been surpassed (although he jumped a wind-assisted 8.99 metres the next yr at altitude).
His 35-year file is not the longest to stand in athletics, nevertheless. Florence Griffith-Joyner’s 100m in 10.49 seconds and 200m in 21.34 seconds, each set in 1988, are unsurpassed, as are the ladies’s 400m and 800m records, set in 1985 and 1983 by athletes from the previous German Democratic Republic and Czechoslovakia respectively.
Even Jonathan Edwards’s 18.29-metre triple leap has stood for greater than 30 years (it was set in 1995), which he believes is as a result of athletics has “not kept pace with the professionalism of sport”.
The 30-minute breath maintain
Croat Vitomir Maričić obtained to 29 minutes and three seconds in 2025, but the large 30, as most likely nobody calls it, has by no means been achieved.
Croatia, certainly, seems to be a centre of excellence for the game, the file was held by his countryman Budimir Šobat, whose time of 24 minutes and 37.36 seconds, was, famous Guinness World Records, longer than an episode of the Simpsons.
Perhaps encouragingly for late starters, Šobat didn’t take up freediving till the age of 48, and mentioned his age helped him keep calm at crucial moments. “Of course, you have to be a little bit mad,” he added.
The first ascent of Gangkhar Puensum
At 7,570 metres (24,836 ft), Gangkhar Puensum is truly a tiddler – solely the fortieth highest mountain on Earth and greater than 1km shorter than Everest. However, the best mountain in Bhutan is additionally the best unclimbed peak on Earth – a standing that might ordinarily ship mountaineers clamouring for his or her crampons.
There have been numerous unsuccessful makes an attempt within the Eighties, but for now no less than, we are able to be assured the mountain whose identify means “White Peak of the Three Spiritual Brothers” will remain unconquered. In 1994, Bhutan banned the climbing of all peaks over 6,000m, citing respect for native non secular beliefs.
