On Wednesday, the Boston Athletic Affiliation unveiled the boys’s elite subject for the 2024 Boston Marathon. The race is headlined by back-to-back Boston Marathon champion Evans Chebet, who will intention to develop into the fourth runner (within the trendy period, since 1950) to win the race three years in a row.
A quick professional males’s subject will take heart stage on the 128th Boston Marathon introduced by @BankofAmerica, that includes two-time defending open champion Evans Chebet, wheelchair course document holder Marcel Hug, & world’s fourth-fastest man Sisay Lemma🤩🦄⁰⁰🔗 https://t.co/pifjVbPPgt pic.twitter.com/W8cvYXNf0O
— Boston Marathon (@bostonmarathon) January 17, 2024
If Chebet have been to perform the three-peat, he would be a part of an unique membership consisting of American Invoice Rodgers (1978-1980), Kenya’s Cosmas Ndeti (1993-1995) and Robert Kipkoech Cheruiyot (2006-2008) as the one males to win three straight since 1950.
Chebet’s familiarity with the course provides him a aggressive edge. Final yr, he accelerated over the ultimate 10K to drop pre-race favorite Eliud Kipchoge and win his second title, in 2:05:54. Chebet will no much less be the favorite heading into the 2024 race, however there can be questions on his health, after he missed the 2023 New York Metropolis Marathon on account of harm.
The 34-year-old is broadly thought of probably the greatest tactical marathoners on the earth and has received six of his final seven marathons. However regardless of profitable his final three majors, Chebet was left off the Kenyan Olympic marathon workforce for Paris 2024, so all focus can be on executing the three-peat.
“Boston has develop into like a second residence to me, and working in Boston is all the time particular—returning because the reigning champion much more so,” mentioned Chebet in a press launch. “The possibility to race in Boston with the followers there provides me the motivation I have to defend my title.”
Difficult Chebet
Becoming a member of Chebet on the elite listing is the 2023 Valencia Marathon champion and the fourth-fastest marathoner in historical past, Ethiopia’s Sisay Lemma. The 33-year-old is coming off a 2:01:48 efficiency in Valencia and can be showing in Boston for the third time in his profession. His earlier performances in Boston haven’t gone nicely; he dropped out of the race in 2022 and completed thirtieth total in 2019. Third time’s a attraction, proper?
One other athlete to look at is 2:03 man Gabriel Geay of Tanzania. Geay has all the time been the bridesmaid in Boston, and by no means the bride. He was the runner-up to Chebet final yr, and fourth in 2022. Different elites within the subject are 2021 TCS New York Metropolis champion Albert Korir and 2024 Houston Marathon champion Zouhair Talbi of Morocco, who received that race in a course document time of two:06:39 and will emerge as a darkish horse to win. (Talbi was fifth at Boston in 2023.)
Canada’s Tristan Woodfine prepared for an additional marathon
Recent off a private finest and a sixth-place end on the 2024 Houston Marathon final weekend, Tristan Woodfine is able to tackle one other marathon, being the lone Canadian within the males’s elite subject. The Cobden, Ont., native ran to a 12-second private finest of two:10:39 on Jan. 14, breaking his former PB from the 2020 London Marathon (2:10:51).
With two spots nonetheless open on the Canadian males’s Olympic workforce for Paris, Woodfine has a possibility to take a kind of spots in Boston. Though the Boston Marathon doesn’t depend as a World Athletics acknowledged course for data or Olympic qualification due to the online downhill, an athlete can nonetheless qualify for the Olympics by inserting inside the highest 5 at an Abbott World Marathon Main. Woodfine doesn’t have to run the Olympic normal of two:08:10 in Boston, but when he can place nicely, he may doubtlessly punch his ticket to Paris. The fifth-place runner on the 2023 Boston Marathon got here throughout the road in 2:08:35.
You’ll be able to view the total males’s elite subject for the 2024 Boston Marathon right here. The ladies’s elite subject, which got here out final week, is obtainable right here.