Press Release - Vienna City Marathon - 4/24/23

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
 
                           Vienna City Marathon:

    After Vienna course record Samwel Mailu vows to help Kenyan talents

Samwel Mailu was glued to the TV screen in Kenya when in October 2019 his 
idol Eliud Kipchoge broke the two hour marathon barrier in Vienna's Prater 
Park. The sensational achievement made worldwide headlines. It was exactly 
on the same stretch of road in the Prater, where Samwel Mailu broke away 
from his remaining rivals on Sunday during the 40th Vienna City Marathon. 
"But I did not think about Eliud in this moment as I was not aware that it 
was exactly on this road where he was running in 2019," said Samwel Mailu. 
With around 10 kilometers left in the race the 30 year-old went on to break 
the nine year-old course record of the Vienna City Marathon with a time of 
2:05:08 in warm conditions. 

Amazingly the final kilometer of the race was Samwel Mailu's fastest on 
Sunday. Despite the final section of the Vienna City Marathon being less 
flat than the roads in the Prater Park the Kenyan stormed through the 42nd 
kilometer in a breathtaking 2:44! This is a pace much faster than Eliud 
Kipchoge ran in Vienna back in 2019. While it was of course just one 
kilometer it still indicates that there is much more to come from Samwel 
Mailu. "In the future I hope to be able to run 2:03 in the marathon and 
around 58 minutes in the half marathon," he said. Looking ahead towards the 
autumn season Vienna's winner added: "I would like to run one of the major 
races and I would prefer a flat course like Berlin." Last autumn he ran his 
first marathon when he was entered as a pacemaker in Frankfurt. He carried 
on and finished second in 2:07:19.

"On Sunday running in warm conditions suited me, because I grew up in an 
area where it is warmer," said Samwel Mailu, whose parents are vegetable 
farmers. He grew up in a village called Ulawani, which is located not far 
from the Tanzanian border and Mount Kilimanjaro. He did not live in high 
altitude and in contrast to many world-class athletes from Kenya running to 
school did not form the basis for his career. "My school was just about one 
kilometer away from our home. I became interested in running when I saw my 
fellow-pupils competing in school championships. I was 15 years old when I 
started training at primary school", explained Samuel Mailu, who then moved 
to a different part of Kenya when he switched to high school. "There I 
lived about even kilometers away from the school, but I often took the bike 
to get there." 

Samwel Mailu says that he then did not train for three years but re-started 
when he was doing a college course to become a primary teacher. "I competed 
at the national teachers' championships in 2019 and won the 1,500, the 
5,000 and the 10,000 metres." Instead of taking up a teachers' job he then 
decided to try running again. "I met my present coach Dickson Ngei and 
started training seriously in 2020, when I moved to his training camp in 
Machakos southeast of Nairobi where we train in an altitude of up to 2000 
metres. We are eleven runners and our coach still competes as well. He was 
second in the Kilimanjaro Marathon this year."

While Samwel Mailu's international career is still at the beginning he 
already thinks about helping others to start a career in athletics as well. 
"In the area where I grew up football and other ball games dominate while 
running has not much significance. This is why I decided to organize a 10k 
running event there in Ulawani." The race will take place at the beginning 
of May. "We will help some young athletes by paying their school fees and 
try to guide them," explained Samwel Mailu, who has two brothers and two 
sisters. "One of my sisters was really talented, but unfortunately she did 
never start training. There are many talents in the area where I come from 
and I would like to help bringing them up."

For more information please visit: www.vienna-marathon.com 

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