The Start Lists Are Out for the 45th Fifth Avenue Mile

New York Road Runners published the professional start lists on Tuesday for Sunday’s Fifth Avenue Mile, and neither of last year’s winners is on them. Yared Nuguse, who won the men’s race in 3:47.7 and was the first American to take the men’s title in nine years, is racing the world road mile championship in Copenhagen instead, six days later. Gracie Morris, who won the women’s race the same afternoon in 4:15.5, is not entered.

Nor is Josh Kerr, who owns the event record at 3:44.3 and, since July, the mile world record at 3:42.66. No former men’s champion appears anywhere on the list, so as the field stands the 45th edition will crown a first-time men’s winner. The women’s field has exactly one former champion in it: Jemma Reekie, who took the title in 2021 and again in 2023 and has not raced here since. A third win would move her clear of every other woman in the event’s history and leave only Jenny Simpson’s eight ahead of her.

“As a two-time champion on 5th Avenue, I know what it takes to come out on top in this field of incredible runners,” Reekie said in NYRR’s announcement. “I’m thrilled to have another opportunity to race through the streets of New York and add a third win to my resumé.”

The world road running championships open in Copenhagen on Sept. 19, and 14 of the 50 professionals racing in Manhattan on Sunday are entered there. Seven of the men are in the world road mile itself: Jake Heyward, Olli Hoare, Stefan Nillessen, Jack Anstey, Pieter Sisk, Romain Mornet and Flavien Szot. Sarah Calvert, Adelle Tracey and Kimberley May are doing the same in the women’s mile, and Drew Hunter, Dylan Jacobs, Courtney Frerichs and Simone Plourde are in the Copenhagen 5K, with Szot down for both races there.

Sunday’s mile falls six days before that one. Nuguse decided against it. He goes to Denmark on a 3:51.9, the American road record, and Isaac Nader, the world 1,500m champion, is in the race with him.

Fifth Avenue drops 20 blocks between East 80th Street and Grand Army Plaza, tipping downhill off the start, rising briefly to 70th Street, falling away again and then flat over the closing quarter-mile. Every mark the race has produced is recorded in tenths of a second, and Kerr’s 3:44.3 on it is seven full seconds inside Elliot Giles’s road mile world record of 3:51.3.

Heyward has the quickest mile best of anyone entered at 3:46.73 and two previous top-three finishes here. Hoare is half a second back on paper at 3:47.28 and was second in 2021. Both were in the Commonwealth Games mile final in Glasgow on Aug. 1, where Kerr won in 3:54.12 and they came home fourth and fifth, with Foster Malleck seventh and Adam Spencer eighth. Hoare was only in that final because the track referee put him back into it: he was clipped from behind in his heat, went down, ran 4:06.84 and finished nowhere, then won his appeal under the rule on unintentional obstruction.

The quickest 1,500m in the field, 3:29.23, belongs to Stefan Nillessen, who won the European title in Birmingham in August. Simon Koech and Leonard Bett arrive from the steeplechase, where they went second and third behind Edmund Serem at the Commonwealth Games in July. Koech has no listed best over the mile or 1,500m.

By track form the women’s field is the deeper of the two. Seven of the 23 have broken 4:00 for 1,500m, led by Susan Ejore-Sanders at 3:56.07. Four have mile bests inside 4:18: Melissa Courtney-Bryant at 4:16.38, Elise Cranny at 4:16.47, Heather MacLean at 4:17.01 indoors and Reekie at 4:17.88 indoors, still the British record. Kayley DeLay ran 4:17.4 for second here last year and is back for another go at it.

NYRR has also put money on the front of the race. Each professional race pays $15,000 across eight places with $5,000 for the win, and there is $1,000 on top for leading at halfway, which pays out only if that leader finishes under 4:00 as a man or 4:32 as a woman. Fade and it goes to the fastest halfway split among the runners who did make the standard. The mile down Fifth Avenue is not always raced hard early. Bernard Lagat won it in 2011 at 36, letting the race come to him and then finding more than a second on everyone else inside the last 100 meters.

The women go at 12:30 p.m. ET and the men at 12:45, inside a noon-to-1 p.m. broadcast window, with ESPN+ carrying it nationally, WABC-TV to New York, New Jersey and Connecticut and 710 WOR AM on the radio. NYRR’s app streams the finish line.

Professional Men

i = indoors; NR = national record; NJR = national junior record. Entrant list per NYRR.

Professional Women

i = indoors; NR = national record. Entrant list per NYRR.