WR holder Paul Tergat to compete in Bogotá Half Marathon – The ladies will also have a strong field including Susan Chepkemei (KEN), who has one of the fastest half marathon s of all time

World Marathon record holder Paul Tergat (KEN) of Kenya will headline this year\’s 8th Media Maratón Bogotá, to be held in the Colombian capital of Bogotá on July 29th. Challenging Tergat, will be fellow countryman, Patrick Makau (KEN) with a 58:56 best time for the half marathon , Joseph Kahugu (KEN) with a 2:07:59 marathon best, Isaac Macharia (KEN) who ran 1:00.53 last year in Luxembourg, William Salgado Gomes (BRA), Otavio Santos Pinheiro (BRA), and Teodoro Vega (MEX).

The ladies will also have a strong field including Susan Chepkemei (KEN), who has one of the fastest half marathon s of all time ( 1:05:44 at the Lisbon Half Marathon in 2001) and is women\’s event record holder (1:10:39 in 2004) . In Bogotá, she will face Claudia Camrago (ARG) who lives in CT, USA, Tatiana Aryasova (RUS), Neriah Asiba (K EN) and many time half marathon/marathon champion from her new homeland of Canada, Lioudmila Kortchaguina who won her third Canadian marathon title at the ING Ottawa Marathon this past May. Kortchaguina will stay and train in Bogotá to ready herself for the World Championships Marathon in Osaka.

International athletes are expected from Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Ecuador, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mexico, Peru, Russia, and Tanzania. They will join 45,000 athletes participating in the half marathon and accompanying 10K, making it one of the world\’s largest road races, and certainly the largest at very high altitude – Bogotá is 2600m above sea-level.

Tergat is firm favorite for the event, and as the holder of a former world best for the half marathon (59:17 in Stramilano, 1998) and a two-time IAAF World Half Marathon champion (1999 & 2000), it is expected that he will threaten the men\’s event record of 1:03:51 set back in 2001 by Peruvian José Castillo.

While in Bogotá, Tergat will take the opportunity to promote the United Nation\’s World Food Program, which appointed him an \“Ambassador Against Hunger\“.

\“My career can be traced back to the World Food Program\’s school feeding program in Kenya in my youth, which enabled me to attend school and later go ahead to discover and develop my running career, just after high school.
The opportunity to act as an Ambassador Against Hunger lets me register my appreciation for it\’s impact on my life, while at the same time enabling other children to benefit from it in the future.\“