World champion Luke Kibet of Kenya will run the Standard Chartered Singapore Marathon on Sunday, 7 December.

Kibet, 25, was the first Kenyan in 20 years to win the world title, in Osaka 2007. But his best time of 2:08:52 came two years earlier in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. That was within a year of switching from his original event, the steeplechase.

Kibet finished 11th in London this year with his season’s best of 2:12:25, and will have a lot to prove in Singapore as his last marathon, at the Beijing Olympic Games, ended in a ‘did not finish.’

The women’s field in Singapore is equally graced by another Kenyan Edith Masai, 41, the winner of three World Cross Country titles. After an eighth place in the World championships in Osaka last year, she returns to the city-state, eager to better her second place there three months later. Masai was the Hamburg marathon champion of 2005 where she set her PB of 2:27:06.

 Singapore’s location, with permanently warm temperatures and high humidity, similar in fact to Osaka in summer, means that Area let alone World records are pretty much out of the question. But it is testament to the excellent organisation and beautiful shoreline course (for much of the race) that over 50,000 applied to enter one the three events in this, the revamped race’s seventh year. And over 15,000 of them will run the full marathon.

Pat Butcher for the IAAF