Fotyen Tesfay Adds Buenos Aires Half Marathon Before Her Valencia World Record Attempt

Fotyen Tesfay is not waiting around. Seven months after running the second-fastest marathon in history on her debut, the Ethiopian has added another race to her calendar: the Buenos Aires Half Marathon on August 23.

The race announced Tesfay’s entry on Instagram alongside her own account, tagging Adidas Argentina and calling her “one of the fastest athletes in the world.” The post highlighted her credentials for anyone who needed reminding: the third-fastest 21K runner in history, the 2025 Berlin Half Marathon champion, and the winner of the 2026 Barcelona Marathon.

Buenos Aires’ half marathon, known locally as the 21K de Buenos Aires, has been held since 2009 and bills itself as the fastest half marathon course in the Americas. It broke the one-hour barrier for the first time in 2018 and carries a World Athletics label, drawing international fields most years. This year’s race starts and finishes near Av. Figueroa Alcorta and Dorrego at 8 a.m.

A Breakout Year

Tesfay’s 2026 has been defined by one race: the Zurich Barcelona Marathon in March, where she ran 2:10:51 in her first attempt at the distance. That time put her second on the all-time list, behind only Ruth Chepngetich’s 2:09:56 from Chicago in 2024, and made hers the fastest marathon debut by a woman ever recorded. It’s also an Ethiopian national record.

Tesfay led the race behind pacemakers before pulling away to win by nearly eight minutes over Kenya’s Joan Jepkosgei Kiplimo. Speaking to the race broadcaster afterward through an interpreter, she made clear she thought she had more in the tank.

“Today was fantastic — not what I was expecting, but it is good,” she said. “My plan was to attack the world record, but today there was a lot of wind, I was not able to push in the last part of the race. Today I did not succeed, but in the next marathon I would like to try for the world record.”

That next marathon is now set: Valencia, on December 6. The race is offering a 1 million euro bonus to anyone who breaks a marathon world record there, the largest single performance bonus in the sport’s history. Tesfay will face defending champion Joyciline Jepkosgei in a rematch of sorts, though the real story in Valencia may be whether conditions cooperate where Barcelona’s wind didn’t.

Building Toward It

Tesfay, 28, has been closing in on this moment for years. She was fourth in the 3000 meters at the 2016 World Under-20 Championships and later won the Great Ethiopian Run, a race that has served as a launching pad for several Ethiopian distance runners before her. She finished seventh in the 10,000 meters at the Paris Olympics in 2024 and eighth at the World Championships in Tokyo last year.

Her half marathon results tell the same story of steady improvement. She ran 1:03:21 at the Valencia Half Marathon in 2024, finishing runner-up to Kenya’s Agnes Ngetich, then returned to Valencia in 2025 and was runner-up again in 1:05:10. In between, she won the Berlin Half Marathon in October 2025, breaking the course record with 1:03:35.

Buenos Aires will be Tesfay’s first race back on the roads since Barcelona. Coming five months before Valencia, it looks less like a target in its own right and more like a tune-up: a chance to sharpen her speed at half marathon distance before she tries to close the 55-second gap to Chepngetich’s world record in December, backed by the largest financial incentive road racing has ever offered for it.

For now, Buenos Aires gets a preview of one of the fastest runners in the world before the sport turns its attention back to Valencia.