Yomif Kejelcha made his marathon debut in London with a time of 1:59:41, finished second behind Kenya’s Sabastian Sawe and recorded the second-fastest marathon performance in history. The 28-year-old Ethiopian broke the two-hour barrier in his first marathon and turned his debut into one of the most striking recent breakthroughs in long-distance running.

Kejelcha later admitted that he had not even imagined a debut of that scale. “I really feel great, I’m very happy. I’m very proud of myself, my coach, all my team,” he said after a race he had not visualised below two hours. “I wanted to run my best time, but my mind was not prepared for two hours. It just happened and I’m very happy,” he explained.

A debut prepared in just 11 weeks

Behind Kejelcha’s nutritional and physiological plan was Santa Madre, a high-performance sports supplementation brand integrated into the Elche-based company We Are Unusual. With only 10 employees, the company works with elite athletes through an approach that combines personalised nutrition, physiological monitoring, product development, load control and performance advice, always in coordination with the athlete’s coach and technical team. According to Alfonso Beltrá, CEO and co-founder of Santa Madre, the athlete was dealing with a knee tendinopathy when the team began working with him in Ethiopia, which forced them to intervene before completing a specific preparation block. The process was reduced to 11 weeks, a very short window to adapt a track and long-distance runner to the 42.195 kilometres.

Beltrá described the plan as “an engineering project”. During the preparation, the team monitored his body temperature, oxygen saturation, heart rate, breaths per minute, caloric expenditure, nutrition, blood tests every three weeks and load coordination alongside his coach. “We had studied everything,” said the Santa Madre executive, who also highlighted the importance of earning the trust of the athlete’s environment: “His coach has been very intelligent and saw that the athlete was improving, and he gradually gave us more room to work.”

The approach even included a different pre-race strategy. Kejelcha did not have a conventional breakfast because the team prepared a carbohydrate-rich drink designed to reduce digestive load and allow him to reach the start with full energy stores. “We wanted his stomach to be empty and the digestive load to be zero,” said Beltrá.

The race decided by 11 seconds

London also confirmed that Kejelcha could compete head-to-head with the best marathon runner of the moment. Sabastian Sawe won in 1:59:30, 11 seconds ahead of the Ethiopian, after a race in which both athletes pushed each other towards an unprecedented frontier. “Sometimes two very strong athletes fail to make something happen, but now it is happening,” said Kejelcha. “Running is about helping each other. We were able to run faster and we did it.”

The finish also left a bittersweet reading for his team. Kejelcha missed two bottles during the race and, according to Santa Madre’s calculations, that loss of carbohydrates may have affected the final kilometre, when the athlete tried to change pace and ran out of energy. Beltrá said that when the Ethiopian crossed the finish line, he still did not know he had gone under two hours and his first reaction was to apologise: “I’m sorry, I made a mistake: I couldn’t grab the two bottles and I was empty at kilometre 41. We lost this race.” Minutes later, he began to realise that he had made history.

From the track to the marathon: the evolution of a different athlete

Kejelcha’s breakthrough in London did not come from nowhere. The Ethiopian had already competed at the Olympic Games over 10,000 metres at Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024, won two world indoor titles over 3,000 metres in 2016 and 2018, claimed world outdoor silver medals over 10,000 metres in Doha 2019 and Tokyo 2025, won the Diamond League and set world records in other distances.

It is a transition that Kejelcha himself admits no longer seems reversible. “I have already competed on the track and I’m not going back,” he said, convinced that the roads now offer him a new competitive territory. He also left open an even greater ambition after his London debut: “The truth is that I believe in myself. Maybe one day I can run under 1:58.” At 28, with a specific preparation block of only 11 weeks and a first marathon in 1:59:41, the Ethiopian now stands as one of the athletes with genuine room to move closer again to Sabastian Sawe’s world record.