EINDHOVEN, the Netherlands — The temperature at the start was 8 degrees Celsius, the wind was negligible, and Samuel Kiprotich Lagat looked at the sky above the Philips Stadium and decided it was a day to run fast. Two hours, five minutes and 31 seconds later he crossed the line on the Vestdijk, having broken the Eindhoven Marathon course record by 41 seconds.
“The pacers did their job to 30 kilometers and after that I was alone, so I just ran,” said Mr. Lagat, 27, who trains in Kaptagat and had never won a major marathon before Sunday. “I knew the course was flat. I did not know it was this flat.”
He finished 1 minute 12 seconds ahead of Ethiopia’s Birhanu Tesfaye, with Belgium’s Thibault Daems a distant third in 2:07:48. Flat, fast and well organized, Eindhoven has quietly become one of the most reliable autumn marathons in Europe for runners chasing times, and 25,000 people took part across the marathon, half marathon and shorter distances.
The loudest cheer of the morning, though, went to a runner who did not win. Femke Roelofs, a 26-year-old physiotherapist from Utrecht, finished fourth among the women in 2:23:10, taking nearly three minutes off her personal best and dipping comfortably under the 2:26 standard the Dutch federation set for next summer’s European Championships in Birmingham.
“I had the time written on my hand,” Ms. Roelofs said, holding up a palm smeared with ink. “At 35 kilometers I looked at it and thought, this is actually going to happen. I nearly stopped to take it in. Then I remembered there were still seven kilometers.” The women’s race was won by Kenya’s Mercy Chepkorir in 2:19:55.
Ms. Roelofs ran for a university club until three years ago and only moved up to the marathon in 2024. Her coach, Bram Teunissen, said she had done the entire buildup while working four days a week. “She is not a professional,” he said. “She has a bike, a job and a very good engine.”
Race organizers said the field was the largest since the event’s founding in 1958 and that entries for the women’s elite race had doubled in five years. “The marathon used to be an old man’s sport in this country,” said the race director, Marjolein Hendriks. “Look at the start line now.”
Mr. Lagat, asked what he would do with his winner’s check of 20,000 euros, smiled. “I will go home and tell my coach the course was flat,” he said. “Then I will come back.”
A version of this article appears in print on Oct. 11, 2026, Section D, Page 15 of the European edition with the headline: Kenyan Sets Course Record in Eindhoven as a Dutch Runner Books Her Place for Europe.
