Chepngetich earns $250,000 USD winning Nagoya Women’s Marathon

March 14, 2022

The timing couldn’t have been better for Ruth Chepngetich of Kenya. As it happened, the Nagoya Women’s Marathon was offering a first-place prize of $250,000, and world record holder, Brigid Kosgei, had just run the Tokyo Marathon on March 6. Tokyo is one of the six Marathon Majors and attracted a strong lead field. With primarily Lonah Salpeter from Isreal as her main competition, toeing the line would mean the 27-year-old would have a good chance at that quarter-million dollar payday.

She came, she raced and she won clocking a 2:17:18 performance. The result is now the second-fastest women’s only marathon performance all-time. Salpeter raced well and finished second in the time of 2:18:45. Her personal best is 2:17:45.

Chepngetich ran splits of 1:09:03 and 1:08:15, respectively. By just over the 30K point, Salpeter, who dropped off the pace earlier, was back. It took a strong final 5K by Chepngetich to drop Salpeter, running near 16-minutes-flat over the final stretch.

The world record in a women’s only race is 2:17:01 by fellow Kenyan Mary Keitany. Chepngetich’s personal best (in a mixed race) is 2:17:08.

Ruth Chepngetich 2:17:18 CR to win Nagoya Women's Marathon and $250,000 – results and video: https://t.co/EXEj8hAE4S
— Japan Running News (@JRNHeadlines) March 13, 2022

The top Japanese runner was Yuka Ando, who clocked a 2:22:22 finish time. She finished third. The 27-year-old’s best is 2:21:36 from the 2017 running of the same event. The first international athlete not in the top-three was Eloise Wellings from Australia clocking a 2:25:10 finish, which is the 39-year-old’s best performance to date. She finished in sixth position.

Fifteen athletes finished under 2:29:30, which has been the Olympic and World Championships standard for several years. Seventy-eight ran sub-3:00:00. Over 300 were within a handful of minutes of the three-hour benchmark.