Berlin Marathon pronounces elite area of sub-2:06 runners

On Thursday, the Berlin Marathon introduced its elite worldwide fields for the 2024 race, to be held Sept. 29. As is so usually the case, the competitors can be fuelled by a deep rivalry between Kenya and Ethiopia. The boys’s prime 10 has a good unfold of Ethiopian to Kenyan runners, whereas eight of the ladies’s prime 10 worldwide entrants are Ethiopian (2023 Tokyo Marathon winner Rosemary Wanjiru is the only feminine Kenyan, and Mizuki Matsuda is the one Japanese athlete within the elite area).

Wanjiru was second at Tokyo in 2024; different standout entrants embody Ethiopia’s Tigist Ketema who, on the 2024 Dubai Marathon, made her debut within the self-discipline by operating the course file within the ninth-fastest time in historical past–2:16:07. 2015 1,500m world champion and 2016 Olympic bronze medallist Genzebe Dibaba may also race; she was sixth at Chicago in 2023. Former half-marathon world file holder Ababel Yeshaneh completed second at Boston in 2022 and fourth in 2023 (regardless of falling on the course).

The deepest battle on the boys’s aspect is sure to be between the quickest entrants, Tadese Takele of Ethiopia (who set his PB of two:03:24 at Berlin final yr, ending third) and Kenya’s Ronald Korir (who ran 2:04 at Berlin final yr for fourth); Kenya’s Kibiwott Kandie, the previous world file holder and the quickest Kenyan half-marathoner in historical past, may also contend for the win.

However regardless of the sector’s spectacular credentials, the course data of two:01:09 and a couple of:11:53 (set by Eliud Kipchoge in 2022 and marathon world file holder and Paris Olympic silver medallist Tigst Assefa of Ethiopia in 2023) are very fast and unlikely to be challenged this yr.

High 10 girls’s worldwide entrants

High 10 males’s worldwide entrants