racerecords

The 10 Greatest Masters Marathons, by Age Grade

Sven7 min read
A lean masters marathoner mid-stride on an open road at golden hour, decades of running in the face, no readable bibs or logos.

On 16 November 2025, Mariko Yugeta ran 2:59:02 at the Kobe Marathon. She was 67.

Run that time through the RaceRecords engine and it scores 100.92%. In age-graded terms, a 67-year-old ran 2:08:45. The women's world record is 2:09:56. The clock says she was 29th woman. The age grade says no marathon I can find, at any age, grades higher.

That is the strange thing about the greatest masters marathons. The best of them don't just beat their age group. They press right up against the number the tables reserve for the world's best 25-year-old, and a few go past it. Not the world record. The ceiling the model thinks is humanly possible.

So I age-graded every masters marathon world record from 40 up, men and women, and kept the best five of each. One run per athlete, every one computed with the same engine the site runs on every race you log.

What does it take to age-grade a marathon over 99%?

A marathon age-graded over 99% means the runner came within one percent of the open-class world standard for their sex, after the age handicap. Six of the ten on this list clear it, and four clear 100%. The score is the time the tables give a world-class runner of that age, divided by the actual time.

Here is the arithmetic, because it's the whole point. If you've read what an age-graded percentage actually means, skip ahead. The men's open standard on the Alan Jones 2025 table is 2:00:35. The M59 marathon factor is 0.8225. Tommy Hughes ran 2:27:52 at 59, which is 8,872 seconds. Multiply by the factor and you get an open-class equivalent of 2:01:38. Divide the standard by that, and the score is 99.15%.

Put plainly: a 59-year-old running 2:27:52 is, in age-graded terms, running a 2:01:38 marathon. That's faster than every marathon run on Earth before 2018.

Who are the five greatest masters marathon performances by men?

Mohammed El Yamani leads the men at 100.76%, for 2:28:28 in Seville in February 2026 at 61. Three of the five are over 100%, and the other two miss it by less than a point.

Ten greatest masters marathon performances by age-graded percentageTwo panels of horizontal bars, men then women, ranked by age-graded percentage. The horizontal axis runs from 90 to 101 percent. The top performance in each panel is highlighted.MENMohammed El Yamani61 · 2:28:28 · Seville 2026100.76%Mark Kiptoo46 · 2:09:12 · Zurich 2023100.45%Kenenisa Bekele41 · 2:04:15 · London 2024100.04%Tommy Hughes59 · 2:27:52 · Frankfurt 201999.15%Giuseppe Damato90 · 4:35:14 · Milan 202699.14%WOMENMariko Yugeta67 · 2:59:02 · Kobe 2025100.92%Sinead Diver45 · 2:21:34 · Valencia 202297.79%Jenny Hitchings59 · 2:45:27 · London 202397.24%Jeannie Rice75 · 3:33:15 · Boston 202396.87%Tatyana Pozdniakova50 · 2:31:05 · Los Angeles 200595.58%
Age-graded with the RaceRecords engine (Alan Jones 2025 road table, open standards 2:00:35 men / 2:09:56 women). Bars start at 90% to separate world-class scores. One run per athlete. Times and ages from World Athletics, Wikipedia masters record lists, and race results.
RankRunnerAgeTimeAG%RaceYear
1Mohammed El Yamani612:28:28100.76%Seville2026
2Mark Kiptoo462:09:12100.45%Zurich2023
3Kenenisa Bekele412:04:15100.04%London2024
4Tommy Hughes592:27:5299.15%Frankfurt2019
5Giuseppe Damato904:35:1499.14%Milan2026

Kiptoo's 2:09:12 at 46 is the one most people haven't heard of. It came in Zurich in April 2023, and it's the earliest marathon I can find over 100% on these tables. Bekele's came a year later, when he was second in London in 2:04:15 at 41. For scale, Galen Rupp's 2:06:55 at 40 in Chicago in 2026, a new American masters record, grades 97.12%. Kiptoo was still at it three years later. His 2:15:24 at 50 in Frankfurt in October 2026 grades 99.36%, but this list keeps one run per athlete.

Then Damato. 4:35:14 at 90 sounds slow until you grade it. The M90 factor is 0.4419, so his time is worth 2:01:38 in open terms, the same as Hughes. A 90-year-old and a 59-year-old, a hundredth of a point apart.

Ed Whitlock's 3:15:53 at 80 (98.98%) sits just outside the five. So does Bekele's own 2:04:19 in Valencia in 2023, at 99.99%, because I've kept one run per athlete.

Who are the five greatest masters marathon performances by women?

Mariko Yugeta leads the women at 100.92%, for the 2:59:02 she ran in Kobe in November 2025 at 67. Her open-class equivalent is 2:08:45, more than a minute under the women's world record.

The women's depth comes from range. Yugeta at 67. Sinead Diver at 45 (2:21:34, Valencia 2022) on 97.79%. Jenny Hitchings at 59 (2:45:27, London 2023) on 97.24%. Jeannie Rice at 75, running 3:33:15 in Boston for 96.87%, the oldest performance on either list apart from Damato. Then Tatyana Pozdniakova, whose 2:31:05 at 50 in Los Angeles back in 2005 still grades 95.58% two decades on.

RankRunnerAgeTimeAG%RaceYear
1Mariko Yugeta672:59:02100.92%Kobe2025
2Sinead Diver452:21:3497.79%Valencia2022
3Jenny Hitchings592:45:2797.24%London2023
4Jeannie Rice753:33:1596.87%Boston2023
5Tatyana Pozdniakova502:31:0595.58%Los Angeles2005

Yugeta's famous 2:52:13 at 62 in Osaka in 2021, the first sub-three by a woman over 60, grades 97.43%. It would be third on this list. She beat it five years later by running slower.

How do masters marathons get past 100%?

By beating the age standard the tables set. The marathon's age factors barely move until the late thirties, so for years it looked like the distance that wouldn't allow it. I said as much in the first version of this post, and I put it down to the marathon being the marathon.

The better explanation is the one in the table above. The curve is fitted through the best times at each age, and runners keep moving those times. Kiptoo, Bekele, Yugeta and El Yamani each ran faster than the curve expects at their age. On the track, Clare Elms scored over 100% at shorter distances the same spring she set a W60 1500m record that graded below it. The tables are a model, and the best runners sit on both sides of it.

What can a normal runner take from these ten?

Almost none of us will see 95%, and that's fine. The value of these scores is the scale they set. When I age-graded 100,807 Berlin Marathon finishers, the median came out around 53%, and 70% already put a runner in the top tenth of that field. The ten here live twenty-five to thirty points beyond that.

Read your own number against the right backdrop. A 70% marathon is a serious club performance. An 80% is national-class. These ten are what the far end of the distribution actually looks like, and they're the reason the scale runs to 100 at all. Someone has to define the edge.

Still, the more useful lesson is the one about age. Bekele at 41 and Damato at 90 sit less than a point apart. The score doesn't care when you ran your best marathon. It only cares how close you got to the best a body like yours can do. Either way, that's a fairer question than the clock ever asks.

The methodology page lays out exactly which tables RaceRecords applies and how. See where your own marathon lands.

Sources

Every age grade above was computed with the RaceRecords engine (Alan Jones 2025 road table, open standards 2:00:35 men / 2:09:56 women). Masters means 40 and over here. I graded every men's and women's masters marathon world record on the Wikipedia list below, plus Hughes's single-age best at 59 and Yugeta's at 62. Times and ages come from:

Frequently asked questions

What is the highest age-graded marathon ever run?
On the Alan Jones 2025 road table, Mariko Yugeta's 2:59:02 at age 67 (Kobe Marathon, 16 November 2025) scores 100.92%, the highest masters marathon age grade I can find. Its open-class equivalent is 2:08:45, faster than the women's world record. Mohammed El Yamani's 2:28:28 at 61 (Seville 2026) leads the men at 100.76%.
Who has the best age-graded men's masters marathon?
Mohammed El Yamani's 2:28:28 at age 61 (Seville, 15 February 2026) scores 100.76% on the Alan Jones 2025 road table. Mark Kiptoo's 2:09:12 at 46 (Zurich 2023) is next at 100.45%, then Kenenisa Bekele's 2:04:15 at 41 (London 2024) at 100.04%. Tommy Hughes's 2:27:52 at 59 scores 99.15%.
Has a masters marathon ever age-graded over 100%?
Yes, four that I can verify on the Alan Jones 2025 table: Mariko Yugeta (100.92% at 67), Mohammed El Yamani (100.76% at 61), Mark Kiptoo (100.45% at 46) and Kenenisa Bekele (100.04% at 41). The earliest is Kiptoo's 2:09:12 in Zurich in April 2023. Over 100% means beating the table's standard for that age.
How can a 90-year-old's marathon score 99%?
Giuseppe Damato ran 4:35:14 at 90 in Milan in April 2026. The M90 marathon factor on the Alan Jones 2025 table is 0.4419, so his time grades to an open equivalent of 2:01:38, the same as Tommy Hughes's 2:27:52 at 59. Both score just over 99.1%.
Which age-grading table does RaceRecords use for the marathon?
Road events use the Alan Jones 2025 table, approved by USATF's Masters Long Distance Running Council in January 2025, with an open standard of 2:00:35 for men and 2:09:56 for women. Older calculators using a pre-2:00:35 standard report higher scores for the same times.

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