Kenenisa Bekele Pulls Out of the Berlin Marathon a Week After Joining the Field

Kenenisa Bekele will not run the Berlin Marathon on Sunday after injuring his left Achilles tendon in training, race organizers said Thursday, exactly a week after they announced the two-time champion was coming back to race.

When Marathon Handbook reported his entry last week, the appeal of the comeback was easy to see. Bekele was returning, at 44, to the course where he won in 2:03:03 in 2016 and then ran 2:01:41 in 2019, missing Eliud Kipchoge’s then world record of 2:01:39 by two seconds. The injury came in the final days of his preparation, shortly before he was due to fly to Berlin, and the organizers’ statement gave no indication of how long he expects to be out.

The news adds to a stretch of his career that has gone badly since the 2024 Paris Olympics, where he finished 39th in 2:12:24. That remains the last marathon he completed. Four months later he dropped out of the Valencia Marathon shortly after 31K, according to World Athletics. He then withdrew from London in April 2025, five days before the race, telling London Marathon Events that “a series of small niggles have prevented me from getting in the training block I require to be at my best.” In November he started the New York City Marathon alongside Kipchoge and did not finish.

So since Paris he has lined up for two marathons and finished neither, and pulled out of two more before the start. Berlin would have been his first race of the year. It is a sharp turn from the spring of 2024, when he ran 2:04:15 for second place in London and set the world masters record for runners over 40.

His exit also removes the second big name from Sunday’s men’s race. Sabastian Sawe, the defending champion, withdrew on Aug. 27 with a stress fracture in his shin. That leaves Gabriel Geay of Tanzania with the fastest personal best on the start list, 2:03:00 from Valencia in 2022, ahead of Getaneh Molla (2:03:34), Guye Adola (2:03:46) and Shura Kitata, who won Seville in February in 2:03:59. None of them arrives as a clear favorite, as we set out in our preview of the elite storylines.

The women’s race was always likely to draw most of the attention, and the organizers led their release with it. Tigst Assefa, who broke the world record here in 2023 with 2:11:53, is chasing the world record of 2:09:56 on Sunday. “I am very well prepared and want to run a personal best,” she said in the statement.

The race starts at 8:45 a.m. local time, 30 minutes earlier than in 2025 after last year’s heat, with organizers expecting about 13 C at the start and 17.5 C by the time the elite runners finish. Our guide to watching the Berlin Marathon has the broadcast details.