Wilson Kipsang Kiprotich (born 15 March 1982) is a Kenyan professional athlete who specialises in long-distance running, competing in events ranging from 10 km to the marathon.
[10] Another good performance followed when he took second at the Ras Al Khaimah Half Marathon[11] – his time of 58:59 made him only the fourth runner to have run below 59 minutes.
[13] Despite being the favourite for the 2009 Berlin Half Marathon,[14] he ended up in third place in a fast race which was the first occasion in which all the top-four runners finished under an hour.
[16] He competed in his first IAAF World Half Marathon Championships at the end of that year, taking fourth place with a time of 1:00:08.
[20] He returned to defend his title at the Frankfurt Marathon and set about attacking Patrick Makau's five-week-old world record.
[22] He won the London Marathon in April in 2:04:44, just 4 seconds short of the course record set the previous year by Emmanuel Mutai.
[26] He stepped down to the 10K for the Great Manchester Run and although he beat Haile Gebrselassie, he was runner-up by one second to Moses Kipsiro.
After his success at the 2017 Tokyo Marathon, Wilson Kipsang returned to Japan's capital, with ambitions to reclaim the world record (WR) that he has lost to compatriot Dennis Kimetto.
In the pre-race press conference, Wilson revealed that he would run a negative split, with 61:30 as his target time for the half-way point.
On the race day, Wilson was unable to maintain the requested pace and ended up finishing 3rd, behind Amos Kipruto and Eliud Kipchoge, who did set a new marathon record, with the time of 2:01:39.