Berlin Marathon broadcasts elite subject 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 typically the case, the competitors shall be fuelled by a deep rivalry between Kenya and Ethiopia. The boys’s prime 10 has an excellent 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 real feminine Kenyan, and Mizuki Matsuda is the one Japanese athlete within the elite subject).

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 working the course document within the ninth-fastest time in historical past–2:16:07. 2015 1,500m world champion and 2016 Olympic bronze medallist Genzebe Dibaba will even race; she was sixth at Chicago in 2023. Former half-marathon world document 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 facet is certain to be between the quickest entrants, Tadese Takele of Ethiopia (who set his PB of two:03:24 at Berlin final 12 months, ending third) and Kenya’s Ronald Korir (who ran 2:04 at Berlin final 12 months for fourth); Kenya’s Kibiwott Kandie, the previous world document holder and the quickest Kenyan half-marathoner in historical past, will even contend for the win.

However regardless of the sector’s spectacular credentials, the course information of two:01:09 and a couple of:11:53 (set by Eliud Kipchoge in 2022 and marathon world document holder and Paris Olympic silver medallist Tigst Assefa of Ethiopia in 2023) are very fast and unlikely to be challenged this 12 months.

Prime 10 girls’s worldwide entrants

Prime 10 males’s worldwide entrants