Kenya's Brigid Kosgei demolishes women's marathon world record to end Paula Radcliffe's 16-year stint at the top

Paula Radcliffe had her 16-year strong women's marathon world record smashed by Kenyan Brigid Kosgei, who ran the Chicago Marathon with a new best of 2:14:04 on Sunday.

It comes just a day after Kosgei's compatriot, Eliud Kipchoge, became the first person to run a marathon in under two hours, making it a historic weekend for marathon running.

The 25-year-old Kosgei's performance at the Chicago Marathon shaved a minute and 21 seconds off the world record which Radcliffe set at the London Marathon in 2003.

Kosgei set a blistering pace from the start, going through the halfway point in 1:06:59 and barely falling off the pace as she pressed on.

The Kenyan said she had focused all her training on beating Radcliffe's record but was surprised to run so fast. "I am happy because I was not expecting this,” she said. “But I felt my body was moving, moving, moving so I went for it.”

But she added that she is still working to improve on her world-beating performance, even suggesting a woman could even one day achieve a previously unthinkable 2hr10 minute finish time.

Radcliffe was present to congratulate Kosgei at the finish line, acknowledging that it was a bitter sweet moment for her. "I always knew that the time was going to come," she said, "when I saw how fast Brigid was running in the first half of the race I knew it was going to be broken".

"If you had told me when I set it in 2003 that it was going to last that long I wouldn't have believed it," she added.

It was on this course that Radcliffe set her first world record, exactly 17 years to the day, with a time of 2:17:18. She went on to set a new record at the London Marathon the following April which she ran in 2:15:25.

Kosgei had set expectations going into the race with a blazing half-marathon performance at the Great North Run in September, and finished yesterday in Chicago almost seven minutes in front of second-placed Ethiopia's Ababel Yeshaneh.

Sunday's performance shaved almost four minutes off her time at this year's London Marathon, which she won with a time of 2:18:20.

In a post-race press conference Kosgei was asked to address the numerous doping scandals that have engulfed Kenyan athletes recently but responded: "I don't know about other people...I don't know about those doping and I say each and every person can run clean."

Meanwhile Sir Mo Farah capped off a bad week with his worst ever marathon performance in Chicago on Sunday, where he had been hoping to retain his 2018 title.

The former Olympic champion finished a disappointing 8th place, more than four minutes behind the winner Kenyan Lawrence Cherono who finished in 2:05:45.

It was a dramatically different performance to last year, when Farah produced a European record in Chicago winning the race in 2:05:11.

Farah had started steady but early into the race there were signs he was struggling. By the 22-mile mark, he was two and a half minutes behind the front.

Farah's training partner Bashir Abdi kept pace with him for a while, but the Belgian broke away in the later stages of the race to secure a fifth-place finish.

It followed a week in which the British athlete had been forced to defend his relationship with disgraced former coach Alberto Salazar, who was found guilty of a string of doping violations earlier this month.

The elite Nike Oregon Project, where Farah trained under Salazar from 2011 to 2017, also announced it would close this week under the shadow of the scandal.

Going into Sunday's race, Farah had insisted that "the marathon takes a while to learn and understand” after finishing fifth place in London's marathon in April, but his poor performance may prompt questions over what the future holds.

It was also a poor race for other Salazar-linked athletes, Americans Galen Rupp and Jordan Hasay. Both left the race before the halfway mark due to injuries, with Rupp suffering a calf strain and Hasay suffering from a pain in her hamstring.

The two athletes had gone into the race without a coach, with Salazar banned from the sport for four years. He has said he intends to appeal that ban.