Kenya’s Brigid Kosgei won the Chicago Marathon on Sunday with a time of 2 hours 14 minutes 4 seconds, breaking the previous world record by 81 seconds.

At 25, the Kenyan defended her title after winning last year’s event, and put almost 7 minutes between herself and her competition. Both from Ethopia, Ababel Yeshaneh finished second with a time of 2:20:51 and Gelete Burka came in third at 2:20:55.

The previous world record time of 2:15:25 was set by Britain’s Paula Radcliffe in 2003 at the London Marathon.

After Kosgei broke Radcliffe’s record, the two of them posed for a photo together.

Radcliffe says it marked a bittersweet moment for her, according to The Guardian.

“If you had told me when I set it in 2003, that it would last that long I wouldn’t have believed it,” Radcliffe said. “But I always knew this time would come — and when I saw how fast Brigid was running today I knew the record would go if she could maintain her pace.”

Kosgei’s world record race came just a day after fellow Kenyan Eliud Kipchoge broke the 2-hour marathon barrier with a time of 1 hour 59 minutes 40 seconds in Vienna, Austria, during an assisted event.

Because of the nature of the event, Kipchoge’s time does not count as an official world record, but was celebrated nonetheless. Both Kosgei and Kipchoge were sporting Nike’s new model of the Next% training shoes.

Kipchoge’s victory was on Kosgei’s mind, she said, as she set out on the Chicago course.

“I kept saying, ‘Tomorrow is my day,'” Kosgei told The New York Times. “I wanted to be the second Kipchoge — the Kipchoge for women. I focused on that.”

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Simone Biles is the greatest gymnast of our time – or any time in history. She proved that Sunday at the World Championships, where she raked in her 24th and 25th world medals, both gold.

Biles, 22, took home five of the six golds to be won in Stuttgart, Germany, winning the top of the podium in team competition, all-around, and vault in addition to floor and beam. (On the uneven bars, she took fifth.)

Combining skills of unprecedented difficulty with flawless execution, Biles surpassed Belarusian Vitaly Scherbo’s record 23 world medals he won in the 1990s.

A gold on the balance beam evaded Biles at the 2016 Olympics in Rio, and so she has her eyes on that prize next summer in Tokyo. The goal that appeared well within reach with her rock-solid performance on Sunday. She won the beam competition by more than half a point – even though she opted not to perform the difficult dismount that’s named for her, a double twisting double back.

The dismount, called the Biles, became the subject of controversy in the days before the world championships.

FIG, the international governing body for gymnastics, decided earlier this month to award the dismount a difficulty rating just one tenth higher than the same move with one fewer twist. Many (including Biles herself) were critical of that decision, spurring FIG to release a statement in which it claimed the committee had made its decision in part out of concern for gymnasts’ safety.

That rating led Biles to scrap the dismount on Sunday. “It’s not worth the one-tenth (extra difficulty point). I’m sorry, it’s just not,” she said, according to The Associated Press.

But on the floor, Biles soared with another element named for her: a triple-twisting double back. As NBC’s announcer intoned, Biles’ floor routine was so packed with difficulty that she could have removed a twist from each tumbling pass and still won. Biles captured the event with a score of 15.133, a full point higher than her second-place U.S. teammate Sunisa Lee.

Biles beamed as the five golds adorned her neck.

And those 25 medals she’s collected from the worlds? “It’s older than my age, so I’m pretty thrilled with it,” she said.

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Three-time Olympic medalist Eliud Kipchoge became the first person to run a marathon in under two hours, clocking in at 1:59:40 as he passed the finish line Saturday morning in Vienna, Austria.

“It has taken 65 years for a human being to make history in sport, after Roger Bannister made history in 1954,” Kipchoge, who’s Kenyan, said in an interview with NTV Kenya shortly after the race.

Bannister broke the 4-minute mile record at an athletic meet in Oxford in May 1954.

“No human is limited,” Kipchoge said.

Kipchoge, the reigning Olympic marathon champion, was already a leading figure in the race to break the 2-hour mark, which the race’s organizer, chemicals company Ineos, called “the last great barrier of modern athletics.”

The ability of a human to run that fast wasn’t even considered possible until the 1990s In 1991, Dr. Michael Joyner published a paper that estimated the fastest time for a human to run a marathon at 1:57:58.

“It’s validating to me, but Mr. Kipchoge did all the running,” Joyner said in a phone interview with NPR.

A short distance before the end of the 26.2 miles, a mere 20 seconds before the fabled two hours were up, Kipchoge pointed at the roaring crowds on either side of him, beating his chest as he crossed. He embraced his wife, Grace Sugutt, before his team piled in on a tidal wave of admiration.

“Today we went to the Moon and came back to earth! I am at a loss for words for all the support I have received from all over the world,” Kipchoge tweeted.

A video posted on Twitter by the National Olympic Committee for Kenya showed the crowd in Eldoret, Kenya – Kipchoge’s hometown – cheering and jumping as his record time was announced. According to Citizen Digital, a Kenyan news organization, Kipchoge will have a street named after him in Eldoret when he returns.

On the Hauptallee, a stretch of tree-bordered road that runs through Prater park, where the course was set, teammates lifted Kipchoge up on their shoulders, draping a Kenyan flag around his shoulders.

In several interviews, Kipchoge has compared his attempt to beat two hours to the effort that goes into putting a man on the moon.

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Kenya’s Eliud Kipchoge’s sub-two-hour time, although unofficial, is another achievement in the world of marathon running for the Olympic gold medalist.

ALEX HALADA/AFP via Getty Images

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ALEX HALADA/AFP via Getty Images

Kipchoge, 34, had come to dominate the world of marathon running, winning the Chicago Marathon in 2014, the Berlin and London marathons in 2015, and the London Marathon in 2016.

He competed in the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, snagging the gold medal in the marathon.

The following year, 2017, saw Kipchoge win another Berlin Marathon and participate in Nike’s Breaking2 event, a marathon held on a Formula One racetrack in Monza, Italy. It was the first marathon Kipchoge ran where he sought to break the two-hour mark, assisted by a team of pacesetters who acted as a windshield running in a V-formation around him. The assistance would mean that, if he beat two hours, the record would stand as unofficial.

On May 6, 2017, he crossed the finish line in Monza 25 seconds past the two-hour mark.

Undeterred, in 2018 Kipchoge won the London Marathon, then turned around and competed in the Berlin Marathon later that year.

At the time, the men’s marathon world record was 2:02:57, held by fellow Kenyan marathoner Dennis Kimetto. Kipchoge beat that time by a minute and 18 seconds, coming in at 2:01:39. He now held the men’s world record for the first time in his life.

If he had stopped then, he would have gone down as one of history’s best marathoners. But the glory of the record in Berlin meant that legendary sub-2-hour record, which had eluded him a year before, was back in his sights.

Saturday’s feat that tested the upper limits of physical prowess, however, will not be officially recognized as a world record by the International Association of Athletics Federations, much like the Breaking2 event. The race, held in Prater park in the heart of Vienna, was not an open event, the course in the park was evened ahead of time and Kipchoge had a team of 41 pacesetters with him, running in rotating teams of seven.

“Remember, the 41 pacemakers are among the best athletes ever, in the whole world,” Kipchoge said. Among them was Matthew Centrowitz, who earned a gold medal for the U.S. in the men’s 1500 meters at the 2016 Summer Olympics.

Kipchoge was also guided by an electric car that projected a green laser, moving at the pace needed to beat two hours, according to the IAAF.

Kipchoge’s shoes were also the subject of much interest. He tied on Nike’s new model of the NEXT% shoe, equipped with a carbon-fiber plate.

Dr. Joyner said it is all about maximizing the runner’s energy economy.

“There’s less energy loss with each foot strike. They’ve tuned it so that the recoil properties of the shoe optimize the ability of the runner to apply force to the ground.”

Between the shoes, the pacers, the closed race and the electric car, Joyner said that the phrase “assisted” in conjunction with Saturday’s marathon needs to be put in context, especially in comparison to Roger Bannister’s mile 65 years ago.

“Bannister had two pacers, the track at Oxford had been recently refurbished, Bannister was a medical student working on maximum human performance, and his shoes had special ultralight spikes,” Joyner said. “I see many parallels between him and Mr. Kipchoge.”

The lack of sanction has, however, not deterred Kipchoge’s supporters. He’s now trending on Twitter, and many professional runners and other athletes have voiced their support, like four-time Tour de France winner Chris Froome. According to The Associated Press, Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta called Kipchoge shortly after the race.

“You’ve made history and made Kenya proud while at it,” Kenyatta tweeted.

Alexander Tuerk is an intern at Here and Now.

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James Harden, one of the greatest players in basketball, has the greatest beard in sports: long, wiry and full. And he wouldn’t be allowed to keep his beard in the Xinjiang region of China, where more than a million Chinese Uighur Muslims have been imprisoned in reeducation camps and “abnormal” beards are outlawed as a sign of dissidence.

It’s not surprising that when Daryl Morey, the general manager of Harden’s team, the Houston Rockets, tweeted an image with the words, “Fight for freedom, stand with Hong Kong,” Chinese state television stopped broadcasting and streaming the Rockets’ games, and Chinese companies dropped their sponsorships. And it’s not surprising NBA officials rushed to say they disagreed with the tweet. It is estimated that the NBA stands to make more than a half-billion dollars in China this year.

And James Harden, who has joined NBA stars in speaking out against police brutality and other urgent issues in America, apologized for Daryl Morey’s tweet by saying, “You know, we love China. We love playing there. … They show us the most important love.”

He may mean dollars and cents — or Tencent, the Chinese company that beams the NBA’s games to some 500 million people. That vast following has made James Harden and other NBA greats not only famous in China, but also even richer with endorsement contracts.

Most Americans buy products from China without much care about how Chinese companies can pay low wages for long hours and sometimes treacherous conditions. We know China is an authoritarian country that censors its citizens, jails dissidents and suppresses free speech.

But the league’s apologies for Daryl Morey’s free speech in support of Hong Kong’s protesters may have shown Americans just how much of our own free speech U.S. corporations are willing to surrender to keep doing business with China.

NBA players have made public stands to support the Black Lives Matter movement and decry police brutality. Seventy-four percent of the players in the NBA are African American. About 20% are from other countries. The league has stood up for players and coaches who criticize U.S. political figures, and NBA Commissioner Adam Silver has spoken proudly of what he has called their “sense of an obligation, social responsibility, a desire to speak up.”

But protesters in Hong Kong and jailed dissidents all over China might tell the NBA how speaking up has cost them a lot more than money.

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After Blizzard Entertainment banned professional esports player Blitzchung from competitions for 12 months over his support for Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protests, there is a growing movement in the gaming community to boycott the company’s decision.

Last Sunday, Blitzchung, whose real name is Ng Wai Chung, appeared on a Twitch broadcast after playing in a Hearthstone tournament. Blitzchung ended his remarks by reciting the popular Hong Kong protest slogan, “Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times.” At the time, he was wearing a gas mask and dark goggles, evoking the gear activists have worn during months of street protests.

For his actions, Blitzchung, who lives in Hong Kong, was handed a one-year ban from Blizzard’s tournaments. The company also rescinded his 2019 winnings, said to be $10,000.

Nathan “Admirable” Zamora, a commentator for the Hearthstone Grandmasters tournament, announced Thursday that he was stepping down from his role as a “caster” on the Hearthstone broadcast team.

“In Hearthstone, good strategic play involves making the right choice, even if that choice will sometimes cost you. You think about the range of possibilities from the other side,” Zamora said in a tweet. “With the hand you’re dealt, you make the best choice you can, even if the foreseeable outcomes hurt. That doesn’t mean you should make worse choices — it means do the right thing, even if you pay the price.”

Zamora is the second esports caster to step down from his position. Brian Kibler also announced his departure, saying he “will not be a smiling face on camera that tacitly endorses this decision.” Two of their colleagues released statements denouncing Blizzard’s action, but it seems they will continue to cast the Grandmasters tournament.

In another act of solidarity with Blitzchung, a user claiming to be a Blizzard employee posted a photo to Reddit showing people holding umbrellas — a reference to 2014’s Hong Kong Umbrella Movement — as they congregated around an orc statue on the campus at Blizzard’s headquarters in California.

Players are also finding ways to protest Blizzard. During a Hearthstone Collegiate Champs match, which was organized by esports company Tespa in partnership with Blizzard, players from American University held up a sign that read “Free Hong Kong, boycott Blizz.”

Casey Chambers, one of the players on the team, said that they, at minimum, expected a ban in retaliation for their actions — but they were not given one by Tespa officials. The team was scheduled to compete in another game next week, but Chambers told NPR they intend to forfeit the tournament in solidarity with Blitzchung.

“This shows Blizzard’s hypocrisy in how it treats different regions,” the team said in a statement. “They are hesitant to suppress free speech when it happens in America, on an English language stream, but will throw casters’ and players’ livelihoods under the bus if they are from Hong Kong or Taiwan.”

Over the past week, gaming fans have found creative ways to show their support for Blitzchung and Hong Kong. Some have created pro-Hong Kong fan art of Mei, a Chinese character in the Blizzard game Overwatch, in an attempt to have Blizzard ban the game in China. And a look at the official Hearthstone Twitch stream shows users have been spamming a ping pong paddle in the chat box accompanied by the sentence, “Spam this pong to free Hong Kong.”

Gamers aren’t the only ones incensed by Blitzchung’s ban. U.S. Sens. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Ron Wyden, D-Ore., tweeted statements denouncing Blizzard’s action, saying it had given in to capital influence from China. As we reported earlier this week, Tencent Holdings Limited, a Chinese conglomerate, owns a 5% stake in Blizzard’s parent company.

Blizzard Entertainment and Blitzchung have not responded to requests for further comments.

Paolo Zialcita is an intern on NPR’s News Desk.

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After several days of controversy, the NBA will complete its exhibition series in China with Saturday’s game between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Brooklyn Nets. But the league says basketball players, including two of the game’s biggest stars in LeBron James and Kyrie Irving, will not address the media in news conferences after.

While no formal conferences will take place, a league source tells NPR that if the Lakers and Nets decide to hold their media gatherings independent of the NBA, they are welcome to do so — and that there would be no repercussions from the league. The source also says the league hasn’t had any discussions about what the teams might decide.

Saturday’s game will end a rocky week between the NBA and China, sparked by an NBA team executive’s since-deleted tweet voicing support for pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.

The NBA said it canceled news conferences for the rest of its games in China after conferring with players and teams.

“We have decided not to hold media availability for our teams for the remainder of our trip in China,” the NBA says in a statement.

“They have been placed into a complicated and unprecedented situation while abroad and we believe it would be unfair to ask them to address these matters in real time,” the league says of the players.

As NPR’s Emily Feng reports from Hong Kong:

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The NBA says basketball players, including LeBron James, will not address the media in news conferences after the preseason games.

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“[The NBA is] referring to the fallout after Daryl Morey, the Houston Rockets general manager, tweeted in support of Hong Kong protests. That unleashed a storm of criticism in China and China’s state broadcaster and tech giant Tencent dropped streaming this week of two NBA pre-season games being played in China.”

ESPN reports the NBA nixed a scheduled press conference Thursday that was set to take place before a game in Shanghai.

That game between the Nets and Lakers was played “with a stipulation by the Chinese government, mandating that no media availability of any kind be held at the game and that NBA commissioner Adam Silver cancel his pregame news conference,” ESPN says.

The NBA spent much of the week trying to get past the controversy that began after Morey tweeted: “Fight for Freedom. Stand with Hong Kong.”

That tweet was quickly deleted, but not before thrusting the league into a vexing position in China. Several Chinese officials and businesses, including the Chinese Basketball Association, headed by former NBA star and Hall of Famer Yao Ming, said they would drop their dealings with the Rockets.

The NBA, like many other U.S. businesses, wants to grow its business in China, where basketball is wildly popular.

The league’s initial statements, issued in both English and Mandarin, exposed the NBA to criticism that it was attempting to appease China at the cost of traditional U.S. values — such as free speech. The fallout forced the NBA to issue another statement and hold a news conference to reaffirm the league’s stance that it will not censor players or teams.

“The long-held values of the NBA are to support the freedom of expression and certainly freedom of expression by members of the NBA community,” Silver said, speaking at a news conference near Tokyo earlier this week.

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