Press Release - Vienna City Marathon - 9/1/21

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
 
                   Vienna City Marathon on 12 September:
          Gelete Burka and Fabienne Schlumpf head Vienna's field

Gelete Burka and Fabienne Schlumpf will head the women's field of the 
Vienna City Marathon, which will take place on 12 September. With a 
personal best of 2:20:45 Ethiopia's Burka will be the fastest woman ever on 
a start list for Austria's most prestigious and biggest road running event. 
The Vienna City Marathon will see its 38th edition next week and organizers 
currently have registered a total of around 25,000 athletes. While this 
includes races at shorter distances there will be 6,000 marathon runners. 
Some of the events will take place on the Saturday. The Vienna City 
Marathon is a World Athletics Marathon Label Road Race and will be the 
first major international marathon featuring a strong elite field and a 
mass race since the start of the Corona pandemic. After providing a hygiene 
concept organizers received the final go ahead from the city a couple of 
days ago.

Gelete Burka has been a very successful track and cross country runner. The 
Ethiopian took the World Cross Country Championships' gold medal in 2006 
(short course) and won the 1,500 m final at the World Indoor Championships 
two years later. In 2015 she was second in the 10,000 m final of the World 
Championships. By that time she already had a few attempts at the marathon 
distance. However despite a personal best of 2:26:03 from 2014 in Houston 
she did not manage to transform her great potential to the classic 
distance. It was then in Dubai 2018 when she returned to the marathon after 
a four-year break and achieved a breakthrough performance: Gelete Burka 
improved to 2:20:45 in the Emirate. 

There was more success in the marathon for Gelete Burka after her sixth 
place in Dubai: In May that year she won the Ottawa race in 2:22:17, then 
she took the Paris Marathon in 2019 with 2:22:47. A third place in the 
Chicago Marathon (2:20:55) followed later in the year. The Vienna City 
Marathon will now be the first marathon for the 35 year-old since 2019.

In contrast Fabienne Schlumpf is still a newcomer to the marathon. The 
former steeplechaser, who took the silver medal at the European 
Championships in 2018, first ran a series of national records in the half 
marathon. Last autumn she achieved a very respectable 13th place in the 
World Half Marathon Championships with an improvement to 68:38. She then 
took the Dresden Half Marathon this March with 68:27. Easily breaking the 
Olympic qualifying standard she clocked 2:26:14 in her marathon debut in 
Bern in April when she took second place. Fabienne Schlumpf then ran her 
second marathon at the Olympics in the extremely tough conditions in 
Sapporo. She achieved a superb 12th place in 2:31:36 which suggests that 
there is much more to come from the 30 year-old in the marathon. „I had 
already planned to run Vienna after the Olympics for a long time,“ said 
Fabienne Schlumpf.

Gelete Burka and Fabienne Schlumpf will face a group of strong Kenyan 
contenders at the Vienna City Marathon. Risper Chebet is the second fastest 
on the start list with a personal best of 2:23:45. She achieved this time 
when she was fifth in Milan earlier this year, improving her PB by almost 
four minutes. Returning to the Vienna City Marathon will be Rebecca Kangogo 
and Celestine Chepchirchir. Kangogo ran her personal record of 2:24:25 here 
when she was runner-up in 2017 while Chepchirchir was third in 2018. She 
has a personal best of 2:24:48 from Seoul in 2019.

More information is available at: www.vienna-marathon.com

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