Chicago Marathon Adds Bashir Abdi as Alex Masai Withdraws

Bashir Abdi, who holds the European record and has two Olympic medals, will race the Chicago Marathon on Oct. 11, the biggest of 16 names organizers added to the elite field in an update published Tuesday. Six athletes have come off the list, Alex Masai among them; he stood on the Chicago podium last October.

Abdi ran 2:03:36 in Rotterdam in October 2021, a European record that still stands, and the 37-year-old Belgian has a bronze medal from the Tokyo Olympics and a silver from Paris. Chicago is familiar ground: his 2:07:08 put him 10th here last October, in the race Jacob Kiplimo won in 2:02:23.

Sondre Moen is on the start list as well, which gives Chicago two men who have held that European record. The Norwegian ran 2:05:48 at Fukuoka in December 2017, a mark that stood for two years, until Kaan Kigen Ozbilen of Turkey ran faster at Valencia in 2019.

Masai’s exit is the one that really changes how the men’s race will look. His 2:04:37 in Chicago last October was both a third-place finish and a personal best, one of the quicker marks on the field list organizers put out in July. Zach Panning and Jacob Thomson are out too, and so is Felicia Pasadyn, whose recovery from a collision with a car in Gainesville, Fla., rules her out, according to CITIUS Mag and its Instagram rundown of the changes.

Eight of the 16 Additions Are American

Chicago will be Cole Sprout’s first marathon. Charles Hicks, his Stanford contemporary and his training partner through this block, is on the start list too, with a 2:04:35 personal best.

Matt Richtman’s last completed marathon was the LA Marathon in March 2025, which he won in 2:07:56 to become the first American man to take that race in 31 years. He returned this March to defend the title and his race ended at 20K. He grew up in Elburn, Ill., west of Chicago, so this one is close to home.

USATF cut the men’s qualifying standard for the 2028 Olympic Trials to 2:16:00, down from 2:18:00 for the last cycle, and only times run since Sept. 1, 2025 count toward it. That makes a fast October marathon worth a great deal to almost every American on the list. Richtman’s 2:07:56, for one, came six months before the window opened.

Nathan Martin, who coaches the cross country team at Jackson High School in Michigan, won LA in March by 0.01 seconds, a margin no LA Marathon had produced in its previous 40 editions. His personal best is the 2:10:45 he ran at Grandma’s in 2023. Brian Shrader, Ben Rosa and Frank Lara fill out the American men.

Sara Vaughn last ran Chicago in 2023 and set her 2:23:24 personal best on that trip; she and Lexie Thompson are the two American women added.

Josh Cassidy of Canada has been added to the wheelchair races, while Tiaan Bosch of South Africa and Rafael Botello Jimenez of Spain, both named in the men’s T53/T54 field in July, have withdrawn. Four Japanese men complete the additions, Tomoki Suzuki, Sho Watanabe, Hiroki Nishida and Ryota Yoshida, along with Vanessa De Souza of Brazil.

Kiplimo and Hawi Feysa both return as champions to one of the seven World Marathon Majors, with more than 55,000 runners entered behind them, a number no previous Chicago Marathon has reached. The race starts at 7:30 a.m. in Grant Park.