On Wednesday, the Boston Athletic Affiliation unveiled the boys’s elite discipline for the 2024 Boston Marathon. The race is headlined by back-to-back Boston Marathon champion Evans Chebet, who will purpose to grow to be the fourth runner (within the fashionable period, since 1950) to win the race three years in a row.
A quick professional males’s discipline will take heart stage on the 128th Boston Marathon introduced by @BankofAmerica, that includes two-time defending open champion Evans Chebet, wheelchair course report 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 had 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 12 months, 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 shall be questions on his health, after he missed the 2023 New York Metropolis Marathon on account of damage.
The 34-year-old is extensively thought of the most effective 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 shall be on executing the three-peat.
“Boston has grow to be like a second house 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 prospect to race in Boston with the followers there provides me the motivation I must defend my title.”
Difficult Chebet
Becoming a member of Chebet on the elite record 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 shall 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 allure, proper?
One other athlete to observe 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 12 months, and fourth in 2022. Different elites within the discipline 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 report 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 discipline. 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 chance to take a type of spots in Boston. Though the Boston Marathon doesn’t rely as a World Athletics acknowledged course for information 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 must run the Olympic customary of two:08:10 in Boston, but when he can place nicely, he might probably punch his ticket to Paris. The fifth-place runner on the 2023 Boston Marathon got here throughout the road in 2:08:35.
You may view the complete males’s elite discipline for the 2024 Boston Marathon right here. The ladies’s elite discipline, which got here out final week, is out there right here.
