Rotterdam [Netherlands], April 12 (ANI): Indian long-distance runner Sawan Barwal made a strong marathon debut by breaking Shivnath Singh’s 48-year-old Indian national record at the Rotterdam Marathon 2026 on Sunday.<\/p>\n
Barwal finished 20th in Rotterdam with a time of 2:11:58, surpassing Shivnath Singh’s 2:12:00 mark set in Jalandhar in 1978 by 0.42 seconds, according to Olympics.com.<\/p>\n
Shivnath Singh’s national record stood as the longest-running Indian athletics mark for nearly five decades.<\/p>\n
Notably, Barwal completed the marathon at a speed of 19.185 km\/h. The Rotterdam Marathon marked only Sawan Barwal’s second competitive race of the year, following his 60th-place finish at the World Athletics Cross Country Championships in Tallahassee in January.<\/p>\n
Olympian Thonakal Gopi also participated in the Rotterdam Marathon 2026, finishing 23rd with a time of 2:13:16.<\/p>\n
With the men’s marathon record now finally broken, PT Usha’s 1984 national record in the women’s 400m hurdles has become the longest-standing Indian athletics record, which was equalled 39 years later in 2023 by Vithya Ramraj.<\/p>\n
Coming to the Rotterdam Marathon, Ethiopia’s Guye Adola won the race in 2:03:54, ahead of compatriot Tesfaye Deriba, who came second with the time of 2:04:15, while Belgium’s Bashir Abdi secured third place with 2:04:19. Kenya’s Kenneth Kipkemoi stood at fourth with the time of 2:04:21, while another Ethiopian runner, Haymanot Alew, came fifth at 2:05:19.<\/p>\n
For the Netherlands, Filmon Tesfu came seventh with a time of 2:06:40.<\/p>\n
First held in 1983, the Rotterdam Marathon is among the world’s most prestigious road races, and the 2026 edition–the 45th–carried World Athletics Gold Label status. (ANI)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rotterdam [Netherlands], April 12 (ANI): Indian long-distance runner Sawan Barwal made a strong marathon debut by breaking Shivnath…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1452,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[1447,1440,1452,1448,41,1450,1446,1420,1451,1449],"class_list":{"0":"post-1451","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rotterdam","8":"tag-indian-athletics","9":"tag-marathon","10":"tag-national-record","11":"tag-record","12":"tag-rotterdam","13":"tag-runner","14":"tag-second","15":"tag-shivnath-singh","16":"tag-the-longest","17":"tag-world-athletics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1451"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1451\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1452"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}