Kjell-Erik Ståhl

Kjell-Erik Ståhl ( Kjell-Erik Bertil Ståhl ; born February 17, 1946 in Killeberg , Osby municipality ) is a Swedish marathon runner .

Ståhl was originally an orienteer . He continued his job as senior manager at Telia when he began his amazing marathon career in 1979. On September 9, 1979 he finished his first of 101 (finished) marathons in Östhammar and his first of a total of 70 marathons under 2:20 hours in a time of 2:16:49 h. At the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow, he finished 19th.

In 1981 he won the Frankfurt Marathon, the first city marathon on German soil in 2:13:20 hours. In the same year he won the Beijing Marathon . In 1982 he was fifth in the Boston Marathon , won the Stockholm Marathon and remained in eleven other runs under 2:21 hours.

The following year he won u. a. at the Munich Marathon and in fourth place at the World Athletics Championships in Helsinki , beaten by just one second by Olympic champion Waldemar Cierpinski , set a Swedish record of 2:10:38 h, which is still unbroken today.

He had to retire at the 1984 Olympic Games marathon in Los Angeles, but remained in nine other runs under 2:20 hours in the same year.

After he had set an age class record in the M40 class in his second win in Stockholm with 2:12:33 h, he was ninth at the 1986 European Athletics Championships in Stuttgart.

In 1991 he set another age class record at the Berlin Marathon with 2:15:51 h, this time in the M45 class. In the following two years he had to have an operation on his heel. In 1995 he ran his last under-2:20 hour marathon in Stockholm at the age of 49.

In 2006 he started the Frankfurt Marathon with the aim of setting a record for the M60 class, but gave up because of problems with his heel.

Ståhl is 1.88 m tall and has a competition weight of 70 kg. The US-American Doug Kurtis still has a few more under-2:20-hour marathons to show, but with 2:13:34 h, he has the significantly worse best time.

Web links

• Kjell-Erik Ståhl in the database of World Athletics (English)
• Kjell-Erik Ståhl in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )
• The toughest of all , article by Thomas Steffens in Runner's World , March 4th 2007 (with a complete list of his marathons)