On Tuesday 25 November 2025 at 10:00 local time, Dieter Coussement will make his debut at the Deaflympics Marathon in Tokyo, Japan.
On 18 May 2025, Dieter Coussement (member of the De Haerne Club Kortrijk deaf sports club and the FLAC Oostkamp athletics club) improved the Belgian marathon record to 2:50:35 in Utrecht. His progress since the European Championships in Odense (2023) and the World Championships in Taiwan (2024) has been particularly remarkable. The BDC board therefore unanimously decided to select Dieter for the Deaflympics.
On 18 May 2025, Dieter Coussement (member of the De Haerne Club Kortrijk deaf sports club and the FLAC Oostkamp athletics club) improved the Belgian marathon record to 2:50:35 in Utrecht. His progress since the European Championships in Odense (2023) and the World Championships in Taiwan (2024) has been particularly remarkable. The BDC board therefore unanimously decided to select Dieter for the Deaflympics.
Dieter has been training for years under the expert guidance of trainer Yvan Desloovere (FLAC Oostkamp) and technical director Marina Demunter, and this is now yielding fruitful results for him.
On site, he will be accompanied by Jan Van den Braembussche (Bruges) and Lieve Roodhooft (Schoten), who also personally accompanied Dieter at the 2024 World Championships in Taiwan.
The top favourites to watch in this marathon are the following athletes:
- Otto Kingstedt (SWE)
- Kohichiro Yamanaka (JAP)
- Takuro Aoyama (JAP)
- Kosuke Nakano (JAP)
- Michal Stanovsky (CZE), gold medal winner in Caixas do Sul (Deaflympics 2022)
- Tomasz Gawronski (POL), who won silver in 2022.
Since 2011, the world record has been held by Daniel Kiptum from Kenya with a fabulous time of 2:11.31, run in Zurich, Switzerland. The Deaflympic record for the marathon has been held by Frenchman Taieb Tounsi since 1989 with a time of 2:24:18. We suspect that this time could be broken at these Deaflympics, given the course.
Dieter will run 8 laps of approximately 5 kilometres each in Tokyo city centre. You can see the route in the attachment below.
SUPPORTERS - BE THERE and SUPPORT DIETER!
