Kipruto will defend BMW Frankfurt Marathon title

Vincent Kipruto at the 2013 BWW Frankfurt Marathon Frankfurt, Germany on October 27, 2013. He will defend his title this year.

Defending champion Vincent Kipruto will return to the BMW Frankfurt Marathon on October 26, but he will face a pair of Ethiopians with sub-2:05 bests at the IAAF Gold Label Road Race.
Last year, 27-year-old Kipruto braved stormy conditions to win in 2:06:15. This year, the conditions will be the least of his worries as he will be up against the likes of Tsegaye Mekonnen and Getu Feleke.
Mekonnen won this year's Dubai Marathon on his debut at the distance in 2:04:32, the fastest time ever by a junior athlete. Feleke, meanwhile, smashed the Vienna course record this spring in 2:05:41 and has a PB of 2:04:50.
The man who surprisingly chased Kipruto right to the line in Frankfurt's Festhalle last year will also come back. At the age of 37, Mark Kiptoo clocked a PB of 2:06:16 in 2013 and finished just a second behind Kipruto.
A fifth sub-2:07 runner, Gilbert Yegon, showed this spring that he is back to his best. Winning the Duesseldorf Marathon in driving rain, he missed the course record by just 18 seconds with 2:08:07, less than two minutes shy of his 2:06:18 PB.
Francis Bowen, who will turn 41 next week, intends to attack the world masters record of 2:08:46, set in 2003 by Mexico's Andres Espinosa in Berlin. Bowen has a PB of 2:08:01 and last year the Kenyan missed the record by just seven seconds when he was third in Chunchon in 2:08:53.
There will also be several marathon debutants in Frankfurt; among them are Kenya's Daniel Wanjiru, who was third in the Prague Half Marathon in April in 59:58, and Ethiopia's Adugna Takele, who finished ninth at this year's IAAF World Half Marathon Championships in 1:00:14.
National interest in the men's race will focus on 2012 European 5000m silver medallist Arne Gabius. After running a fine half marathon debut of 1:02:09 in New York earlier this year, the 33-year-old is aiming for a time in the region of 2:10.
Elsewhere, there was no world record, or even an improvement on his own Asian record, for Mutaz Barshim and he had to be content with just adding the Asian Games record to his ever-growing list of accolades, but there was no doubt that the Qatari high jumper was the star of the show on the third day of the athletics programme in the South Korean city of Inchon on Monday.

Barshim, in his 15th and probably last competition of 2014, had spoken before the event of hoping he was able to make an attempt on Javier Sotomayor's long standing world record of 2.45m, but the Asian record-holder at 2.43m had to settle for retaining his Asian Games title at 2.35m.
Five men were still in the competition as the bar was raised to 2.29m but only Barshim and Chian's Zhang Guowei – partners in the Asia-Pacific team at the recent IAAF Continental Cup – cleared, leaving Barshim's younger brother Muamer to take the bronze medal on countback as he had a flawless record up to and including 2.25m.
The elder Barshim, jumping first, then threw down the gauntlet and went straight over the next height of 2.33m, equalling the Games record held since 1982 by China's former world record-holder Zhu Jianhua.