Beata Naigambo shattered the Namibian marathon record on Friday when she came 14th at the Dubai Marathon in a time of 2:29:20.
Naigambo’s time was an improvement of more than a minute on the former record of 2:30:35 that Helalia Johannes had established when she won the Dublin Marathon in October last year.
Competing against some of the world’s top marathon runners, Naigambo kept up with the early pace setters before dropping off the pace over the second half of the race.
The defending champion Asselefech Medessa of Ethiopia went on to win the race in a new record time of 2:19:31, which was more than three minutes faster than her previous record of 2:22:45.
Lucy Kabuu of Kenya finished three seconds behind Medessa in second place, while another Ethiopian Mare Dibabe came third in 2:19:52. The top five women all finished within a minute of each other.
The front runners set an exceptionally fast pace as the top seven women all smashed the previous record.
Naigambo finished well off the pace, nearly 10 minutes behind Medessa.
Naigambo’s latest achievement comes hot on the heels of her fine performance at the Bank Windhoek Grand Prix in Windhoek on January 14 when she smashed the Namibian 3 000m record by more than 10 seconds. Her winning time of 9:20,34 beat Sesilia Iikango’s former mark of 9:30,98 which was set in 1998.
Naigambo and Johannes, who have both qualified for this year’s Olympic Games, have been pushing each other to new record times in the women’s marathon over the past few years.
In October 2007, Johannes astonished observers when she set a new Namibian marathon record of 2:35:30 at her first attempt over the 42,2km distance.
Five months later she set a new time of 2:33:06 at the Seoul Marathon, and then once again improved the mark to 2:32:30 at the Dublin Marathon in October 2008.
A year later, Naigambo shattered this mark when she won the Eindhoven Marathon in a new record time of 2:31:01.
That record stood for two years until Johannes reclaimed it with a new time of 2:30:35 at the Dublin Marathon in October 2011.
But now, slightly more than three months later, Naigambo has once again reclaimed the Namibian marathon record with a time of 2:29:20.