After two years of cancellations and postponements, the 36th edition of the Hamburg Marathon has become a record race.

In an exciting duel, Cybrian Kotut from Kenya won in 2:04:47 hours in front of debutant Stephen Kissa from Uganda, who had to admit defeat by one second.

The duo remained well below the previous course record of 2:05:30 hours set by Kenyan Eliud Kipchoge in 2013. In the fastest marathon race to date in the Hanseatic city, even Workineh Tadesse (Ethiopia/2:05:07) in third place and Victor undercut it Kiplangat (Uganda/2:05:09) in fourth, Kipchoge's record.

However, the men's result was outshined by Yalemzerf Yehualaw.

The 22-year-old Ethiopian finished her debut in 2:17:23, setting a world-class time.

She not only undercut the old Hamburg record of 2:21:55 set by Meselech Melkamu from Ethiopia in 2016, but also received an extra time bonus of 40,000 euros in addition to a prize of 25,000.

The British Paula Radcliffe recently received the award for the fastest debut time worldwide.

In 2002 in London she ran 2:18:56 hours.

In the men's category, veteran Kotut received 40,000 euros for his win, while Kissa had to settle for 17,500 euros despite being just a second behind.

Kristina Hendel creates EM and World Cup standard

The performance of the German top runners was also pleasing.

Kristina Hendel (LG Braunschweig) was 2:27:29, one second below her personal best and also well below the norms for the World Championships (2:29:30) and European Championships (2:32:30).

"It was really hard," said the overall fifth on NDR television.

Whether the native Croatian will actually be allowed to start for the DLV in the future will be decided shortly.

Deborah Schöneborn (SCC Berlin) finished ninth and was "very satisfied" with her time of 2:29:51.

For the German men, on the other hand, things did not go well.

Philipp Pflug (SCC Berlin) got out after around 30 kilometers due to back problems.

His Berlin teammate Johannes Motschmann also had problems in the last few kilometers and with a time of 2:17:08 he fell well short of his expectations.

The best German was Florian Röser from TV Konstanz (2:15:03), who came in 21st place.