European Record Holder Andreas Almgren Chose One of the Hardest Majors for His Marathon Debut

Andreas Almgren will make his marathon debut at the New York City Marathon on Nov. 1, on a course that has never produced a time within five minutes of the world record.

The 31-year-old Swede appears in the professional field New York Road Runners released Aug. 19 with the word Debut where a personal best would go, one of three men in the open division who have never raced the distance. Ten of the others have run under 2:05, led by defending champion Benson Kipruto at 2:02:16.

Almgren holds European records at 5,000m (12:44.27), 10K (26:45) and the half-marathon (58:41), the last of them run in Valencia on Oct. 26, 2025, where he finished fourth behind Yomif Kejelcha’s 58:02. No European had covered the distance in under 59 minutes before him. His 26:45, also in Valencia, on Jan. 11, was his fourth European record inside 12 months. This month in Birmingham he won the European 10,000m title in a championship record 27:23.44, finishing 19.23 seconds clear of the field, the widest winning margin in the event at the European Championships since 1990, LetsRun reported. He took bronze over 10,000m at the World Championships in Tokyo last September.

New York does not offer the conditions behind any of those numbers. The men’s course record, 2:04:58, was set by Tamirat Tola in 2023, and it displaced a mark Geoffrey Mutai had held for 12 years. Of the seven Marathon Majors, only Sydney’s men’s record is slower. The next slowest after New York, Tokyo’s 2:02:16, is 2:42 faster, and Sabastian Sawe’s world record of 1:59:30, run in London in April, is more than five minutes quicker. The New York route crosses five boroughs and five bridges. It opens with a climb of more than 150 feet over the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge in the first mile, climbs again for about three-quarters of a mile on the Queensboro Bridge at mile 15, and gains roughly 100 ft on Fifth Avenue between miles 22 and 23. New York Road Runners also removed pacemakers from the professional race in 2007. “In the end, it is all about the thrill of racing and the pursuit of victory,” Mary Wittenberg, then the race director, said in announcing the decision on May 3 that year.

The choice makes more sense if the target is a placing rather than a time. Almgren has run 1:45.59 for 800m and won bronze over the distance at the 2014 World U20 Championships, and a marathon settled by a move through Central Park rewards a finishing kick that a flat, paced course would waste. World Athletics lists the Swedish record at 2:05:57, set by Suldan Hassan in March 2025. No Swede has run a marathon as fast as Tola’s course record.

Almgren announced the debut himself, in a video posted to his Instagram account on Aug. 19 and reported by SVT and sportbibeln. Speaking in Swedish, he said the numbers, the training and the physiology all pointed toward the marathon, and that while he had learned to suffer for about an hour, two hours felt like arriving in a new world. He said he is not leaving the track.

Nov. 1 marks 50 years since the race first crossed all five boroughs, in 1976. Kipruto defends, and Weini Kelati, who holds the American half-marathon record at 1:06:09, is making her own debut the same day.