‘Silent assassin’ Sabastian Sawe targets world record in London Marathon

They call Sabastian Sawe the silent assassin. And, whisper it, but the Kenyan may just take down the men’s world marathon record in London on Sunday.

It is an imposing target, set by Kelvin Kiptum in 2023, which stands at two hours and 35 seconds. But Sawe believes he is in similar shape to when he went for the world record in Berlin last September, only to be thwarted by temperatures in the mid-20s centigrade.

Intriguingly this time he also comes armed with Adidas’s new Pro Evo 3 supershoe, which weighs in at an astonishingly light 96 grams, and he says is even faster than its predecessor. Asked on Friday whether it could lead to him breaking the London course record of 2:01:25 or maybe the world record, Sawe gave a short and partly instructive answer: “Yes,” he said, to laughter.

And while the London course is not as fast as Berlin or Chicago, Sawe’s agent, Eric Lilot, says that they will ask the pacemakers to go through halfway in 60 minutes and 30 seconds which at least gives him a chance of making history, especially given there are tailwinds forecast for the final few miles.

“He’s a silent assassin,” Lilot added. “He’s so quiet. But when he steps on the road he is a beast.”

Sawe’s coach, Claudio Berardelli, also confirmed that last year’s London Marathon winner had fully recovered from a stress fracture in his foot after Berlin and a back injury in December, which made him miss 10 days of training.

“When he got the back problem, I was like, ‘hey, no rush, let’s fix it’,” said Berardelli. “And if we can be ready for London, then we might see what to do. But by early February, he was impressive. We took our risks a little bit in terms of picking up the volume again and the intensity. But his body responded.”

And given Sawe has run only four marathons, Berardelli is convinced there is more in the tank. “I’ve been coaching for more than 20 years in Kenya, and when I started dealing with Sabastian, I immediately realised this is not just a good athlete, this is not just one of the best Kenyan guys. At least for my experiences, he is a different human being. An outlier.”

However Sawe will not have it his own way given he faces a stacked field of Kenyan and Ethiopian talents, which includes Jacob Kiplimo, who shattered the half-marathon world record by running 57min 20sec last month, the Olympic champion Tamirat Tola and Yomif Kejelcha, who makes his marathon debut having won 10,000m silver in September.