A Game of Rock, Paper, Scissors Decided When London’s Elite Men and Women Will Race in 2027

Most runners have settled an argument with rock, paper, scissors at some point, though probably not one with a marathon schedule riding on it. That is how organizers decided the running order for the 2027 Double, the one-time, two-day edition of the London Marathon next April. Sabastian Sawe, the men’s champion and world record holder, faced Catherine Debrunner, the Swiss wheelchair racer who holds the women’s wheelchair world record and has won London four times, and Debrunner won.

Her win means the elite women will race on Sunday, April 25, and the elite men will open the weekend a day earlier, on Saturday, April 24, London Marathon Events announced Wednesday. The split carries down through the fast fields behind them, with the men’s Championship and Good for Age runners going on Saturday and the women’s on Sunday. Men, women and non-binary runners will share the mass start on both days. The game was overseen by an adjudicator, and it now holds a Guinness World Records title as the first elite marathon start ever decided by rock, paper, scissors.

Organizers had said since they announced the two-day format that the men and women would race on separate days, and they had promised to say which would go first by the end of September, so the game settled it with a day to spare. Hugh Brasher, the chief executive of London Marathon Events, said the Sunday start would bring a change that the women’s side of the race has never had in London.

“Splitting the elite races will allow us to shine an even brighter spotlight on the extraordinary athletes taking part,” Brasher said. “I’m particularly looking forward to the elite women’s start on Sunday, when, for the first time in London, female athletes in the Championship categories will line up behind the women’s elite field.”

Both of London’s reigning champions set world records on the course in April. Sawe won in 1:59:30, the first sub-two-hour marathon run in a record-eligible race, and Tigst Assefa took the women’s title in 2:15:41, a women-only world record. World Athletics has since ratified both marks. Whether Assefa will be on the Sunday start line is much less certain. She ruptured her right Achilles tendon late in the Berlin Marathon on Sept. 27, still won in a course record, and had surgery the next day, and her manager, Gianni Demadonna, told Marathon Handbook he could not yet say when she would race again.

A record 1,338,544 people applied for the 2027 ballot, which is why the Double exists at all, and organizers responded by spreading 100,000 runners across two days on the usual course from Greenwich to Westminster. They expect the weekend to raise more than £150 million ($200 million) for charity, more than any single sporting event in the UK has raised before. Not everyone along the route is looking forward to it, and local politicians and business owners have already raised concerns about two straight days of road closures.

Championship and Good for Age Entries Open Thursday

For runners who missed out in the ballot, the announcement also starts the clock on two of the other routes in. Applications for both open on Thursday, Oct. 1, the day after the qualifying window closed.

Championship places go to men who have run under 2:38:00 for the marathon or 1:11:30 for the half-marathon, and women under 3:10:00 or 1:26:00, with the time set between Oct. 1, 2025, and Sept. 30, 2026. The Championship entry deadline is 4 p.m. BST on Tuesday, Oct. 20.

Good for Age is for UK residents only and is capped at 6,000 places, 3,000 for men and 3,000 for women, allocated fastest first relative to each age group, and hitting the time only earns the right to apply. The standards and the cap are the same as for the 2026 race, when both were tightened, and applications close at 4 p.m. GMT on Thursday, Oct. 29.