The Chicago Marathon 2023 on October 8 saw an exhilarating display of track and field excellence from the participants. The 45th edition of this prestigious race had plenty of wow moments to celebrate. Along those lines, the marathon recorded more than 47,000 participants who ran the tough 26.2-milе course with undiminished enthusiasm. Their determination and unvarnished positivity shone through and brought the excitement of the race to a fever pitch.

Although the race had plenty of well-performing athletes, the American runners did not use the home crowd to their advantage. They looked a bit sluggish next to the iconic Kenyan champion, who not only won the race but made a new record.

Kelvin Kiptum trounces American track and field stars

Kenya’s Kelvin Kiptum rewrote the marathon world record with an electrifying run at the Chicago Marathon 2023. He covered the challenging course in 2 hours and 35 seconds, falling short of finishing in a sub-2 hour time. Another foreigner, Sifan Hassan from the Netherlands, ran her career best and made the second-fastest women’s record at 2:13:44. The American track and field athletes struggled to keep up against these two stalwarts. USA Track and Field announced the disappointing news on Facebook, writing, “Top Americans in Chicago 🇺🇸☝️ Conner Mantz finished sixth in 2:07:47 as the top American male! Clayton Young, Galen Rupp, and Sam Chelanga were right behind going 7-8-9! Emily Sisson finished seventh in 2:22:09 with Molly Seidel and Sara Vaughn in eighth and tenth! 🤩”

Connor Mantz has improved his time a lot since 2022 but has still fallen short of the Kenyan legend. Kiptum is girded to win the Olympic champion title for the third time in the upcoming season. Meanwhile, Mantz is America’s best hope for Olympic glory and is the favorite going into the Olympic trials in February 2024. Galen Rupp had come back to track and field after an injury and produced a good performance. Team USA’s women racers were represented by Emily Sisson, Molly Seidel, and Sara Vaughn. Each of them will be vying for the three Olympic spots, but if they want to experience glory on the podium, they will need to improve their time. Despite their poor performance as compared to the foreign track and field athletes, the fans are ready to get behind them.

Fans cheer for American track and field Olympic hopefuls

The fans continue to support these athletes as they left beautiful comments to motivate them. In that spirit, one fan wrote, “I have started working out, the olympic is calling me.” Another fan also cheered for the Team USA athletes, commenting, “Congratulations to Connor, Emily and all Team USA participants. Especially glad to see By Golly Molly coming back. The Olympic Trials should be epic this year”.

The next fan commended their performance, writing, “Great showing by an amazing group of athletes.” Another fan greeted the team but also questioned the poor results, remarking, “Congratulations 👍 still I wonder it’s almost 2mi. behind the winner 🤔 with a such competitive XC NCAA league, training systems, running teams, alltidue training, recovery and supplements it’s far behind the best. Curious what it is?” Along those lines, another fan was upset that the team could not reach the world record time, stating, “7:12 off the winning time albeit that time is a pending WR.”

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