Pius_Maiyo_Kirop
Pius Maiyo Kirop
Kenyan road runner (born 1990)
Pius Maiyo Kirop (born 8 January 1990) is a Kenyan road runner. He won a team gold medal at the IAAF World Half Marathon Championships in 2012.
Kirop began competing on the European professional circuit in 2009, taking a runner-up spot at the Bucharest Half Marathon. He returned the following year to win that race and set a personal best of 60:39 minutes in fourth at the Route du Vin Half Marathon. His marathon debut in Frankfurt ended in a failure to finish. Highlights of his 2011 season included fourth-place finishes at the Göteborgsvarvet and Route du Vin race, but another marathon outing in Köln Marathon saw him fail to finish again.[2]
In 2012 he set a personal best of 59:25 minutes at the Berlin Half Marathon and won the Tilburg Ten Miles. He was selected for Kenya for the 2012 IAAF World Half Marathon Championships.[3] Despite being one of the lesser runners on the circuit, he gave a strong performance there, taking fourth place in 61:11 minutes and helping John Nzau Mwangangi and Stephen Kosgei Kibet to the team gold medals.[1]
Kirop failed to make a breakthrough after his 2012 season – he ran in higher calibre races, but struggled to get near the top of the fields. He began marathon running in 2015 and set a best of 2:09:58 hours for ninth at the Paris Marathon.[2]
