World Athletics Reveals the Olympic Marathon Standards for LA28

Marathoners who started chasing a place at the LA28 Olympics on Nov. 1 finally have a time to aim at. World Athletics published its qualification system for the Los Angeles Games on Tuesday, and the marathon entry standards are 2:05:00 for men and 2:22:20 for women, to be run between now and April 30, 2028.

Tamirat Tola won the men’s marathon at the Paris Olympics in 2:06:26 on Aug. 10, 2024, an Olympic record. Sifan Hassan won the women’s race the following day in 2:22:55, also an Olympic record. Neither winning time would meet the LA28 standard: Tola would need to find another 1:26, and Hassan another 35 seconds.

For Paris, the standards were 2:08:10 and 2:26:50, so the men’s mark has come down by 3:10 in one Olympiad and the women’s by 4:30. The new times are also a full minute quicker than the 2:06:00 and 2:23:20 World Athletics set in May for next year’s World Championships in Beijing, which had already tightened the 2:06:30 and 2:23:30 asked of runners for Tokyo in 2025.

World Athletics said it worked the numbers out from top lists for the qualification periods of its four most recent global championships, the World Championships in 2022, 2023 and 2025 and the Paris Olympics, counting no more than three athletes per country, and then built in where it expects performances to go. The marathon was pushed further still, because the federation’s data showed marathon times in Olympic years beating its own projections by between half a minute and a minute.

Ten Runners Have Already Met the Standard Without Running It

A top-five finish at any Platinum Label marathon inside the window counts the same as running the time, and World Athletics will put those finishers at the head of its Road to LA list. The window opened on the same day as the New York City Marathon, a Platinum Label race, which means 10 runners have met the standard already, and none of them ran under it.

Andreas Almgren won in New York in 2:06:01 on his marathon debut, ahead of Yemaneberhan Crippa, Kamohelo Mofolo, Benson Kipruto and Haftu Strintzos, who was fifth in 2:06:34. Sheila Chepkirui won the women’s race in 2:24:36. Jess McClain was second in 2:24:42, more than two minutes outside the new standard, with Hellen Obiri, Edna Kiplagat and Mercy Chelangat completing the top five.

World Athletics expects about 40 percent of each field to qualify through the standard and the other 60 percent through the world rankings, a shift from the even split it planned for Paris. If more runners hit the standard than there are places, the fastest of them take the spots and nobody gets in on ranking. Each race has 70 places. The first 55 are fixed from the Road to LA list on March 19, 2028, and the last 15 are settled after that date under the same rules, without bumping anyone already in. A national Olympic committee can also hand one of its places to an athlete who has not qualified, provided that runner has gone 2:11:00 (men) or 2:29:00 (women) in the window.

The Host Nation’s Marathoners

Conner Mantz ran 2:04:43 in Chicago in October 2025, the fastest any American has gone on a record-eligible course, and that American record sits just 17 seconds inside the new men’s standard. Mantz was 11th in New York on Nov. 1 in 2:07:27.

The U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials are in St. Louis on March 25, 2028, only six days after World Athletics locks in its first 55 names in each race. The governing body will publish the Road to LA list in the second half of 2027, and the men’s Olympic marathon is set for July 30, 2028, the final day of the Games.