As we inch towards the autumn street racing season, the 2024 Chicago Marathon is the primary Abbott World Marathon Main (AWMM) to announce its males’s and girls’s elite checklist. Final yr’s elite races in Chicago noticed two course information and one world document set by the late Kelvin Kiptum—one thing that shall be exhausting to beat. However the 2024 subject doesn’t lack expertise or potential, with former world champion and fourth-fastest marathoner in historical past Ruth Chepngetich headlining the ladies’s subject and world 10,000m silver medallist Daniel Ebenyo making his marathon debut within the males’s subject.
The boys’s race
Ebenyo has had a profitable profession on the observe, successful a number of medals at World Championships and Commonwealth Video games, however by no means particular person gold. He’s at the moment ranked by World Athletics as the highest 10,000m runner on the earth, holding a private better of 26:57.80, which he set in 2023. The 28-year-old was not chosen for the ten,000m by the Kenyan Olympic workforce for Paris 2024 after an eighth-place end on the Kenyan Trials.
Though the Kenyan star has had success on the observe, he has additionally flourished in his brief profession on the roads, successful silver within the half-marathon on the inaugural World Highway Operating Championships in Riga, Latvia. He holds a private better of 59:04 for the half distance and a world greatest over 25 km (1:11:13).
Ebenyo’s potential over 42.2 km shall be exhausting to foretell; many individuals had excessive expectations for three-time world 10,000m champion Joshua Cheptegei of Uganda, however he struggled in his marathon debut final December in Valencia, clocking 2:08:59 for thirty seventh place.
Becoming a member of Ebenyo within the males’s subject is 2022 London Marathon champion Amos Kipruto, who has the quickest private greatest within the subject (2:03:13 from the 2022 Tokyo Marathon). Kipruto has podiumed at three of the six AWMMs and is named among the best tactical marathoners on the earth. Chicago shall be Kipruto’s first marathon since his seventh-place end in Berlin final yr.
The lone Canadian within the males’s subject is Phil Parrot-Migas of London, Ont. This would be the third marathon of his profession. He holds a private greatest of two:15:53, set in Hamburg in April.
The ladies’s subject
On the 2022 Chicago Marathon, Chepngetich was on a world-record tempo till the ultimate kilometre, in the end lacking it by 14 seconds (2:14:18). This capped off her second-straight Chicago victory, following within the footsteps of her compatriot, Brigid Kosgei. Final yr, Chepngetich was second to Sifan Hassan’s course document-setting run, in 2:15:37. Her private greatest is the quickest within the subject by a minute and a half, and together with her expertise on the flat and quick course, she’s going to be a troublesome athlete to beat come Oct. 13.
Moreover Chepngetich, there’s a robust American contingent, consisting of three of the nation’s prime 5 quickest marathoners: Keira D’Amato, Sara Corridor and Betsy Saina. D’Amato had a tough go on the 2024 U.S. Olympic Trials, and was unable to complete, attributable to harm. Months later, she introduced a training change and a deliberate transfer to Utah to coach below distance operating guru Ed Eyestone, the coach of U.S. Olympic marathoners Conner Mantz and Clayton Younger. D’Amato, who will flip 40 in October, informed Runner’s World she made the swap as a result of she needed a distinct perspective on her coaching and an opportunity to study from somebody new.
Saina comes into the race because the strongest American athlete, putting within the prime 5 of her final three marathons, together with a win on the 2023 Sydney Marathon. Sydney is at the moment a candidate to be added because the seventh AWMM, becoming a member of Tokyo, Berlin, London, Boston, Chicago and NYC.
There are not any Canadian feminine marathoners within the girls’s elite subject. For the complete checklist of elites, verify right here.
