2026 New York City Marathon Elite Field: Conner Mantz

Conner Mantz arrives at the New York City Marathon as the fastest record-eligible American ever, carrying the 2:04:43 he ran in Chicago last October. New York will be his first marathon since that run. He spent most of 2026 recovering from two stress fractures in his sacrum and has raced just twice this year, both times with this race in mind, and he lines up against a men’s field led by defending champion Benson Kipruto and the one American who has run faster than him, Zouhair Talbi.

Conner Mantz at a Glance

• Age: 29 (born Dec. 8, 1996, in Logan, Utah)
• Hometown: Smithfield, Utah
• College: Brigham Young University (BYU)
• Coach: Ed Eyestone
• Sponsor: Nike (professional since December 2021)

Personal Bests

• Marathon: 2:04:43 (Chicago, 2025)
• Half-marathon: 59:17 (Houston, 2025). He also ran 59:15 at the 2025 New York City Half, which is not a record-eligible course.
• 10K (road): 27:26 (Beach to Beacon, Cape Elizabeth, Maine, 2025)
• 10,000m: 27:25.23 (2022)
• 5,000m: 13:10.24 indoors (Boston, 2022); 13:11.81 outdoors (Eugene, 2022)
• 1,500m: 3:37.92 (Eugene, 2023)

Records

• American marathon record: 2:04:43, Chicago, Oct. 12, 2025. Still current. Talbi ran 2:03:45 at Boston in April, but Boston’s point-to-point course is not eligible for records.
• American half-marathon record: 59:17, Houston, January 2025. Still current. It took 26 seconds off the 59:43 Ryan Hall ran in 2007.

Marathon Results

• 2022 Chicago: 7th, 2:08:16 (debut)
• 2023 Boston: 11th, 2:10:25
• 2023 Chicago: 6th, 2:07:47
• 2024 U.S. Olympic Trials: 1st, 2:09:05
• 2024 Paris Olympics: 8th
• 2024 New York City: 6th, 2:09:00
• 2025 Boston: 4th, 2:05:08
• 2025 Chicago: 4th, 2:04:43

Titles and Championships

• U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials champion (2024)
• NCAA Division I cross-country champion (2020 and 2021)
• U.S. half-marathon champion (2021)
• U.S. 20K champion (2022 and 2025)
• 8th at the 2024 Olympic marathon in Paris
• 12th at the 2026 World Half-Marathon Championships in Copenhagen

From Smithfield to BYU

Mantz grew up in Smithfield, a few miles north of Logan, and never left Utah to run. At BYU he was coached by Ed Eyestone, a two-time Olympic marathoner, and that partnership has carried on through his whole professional career.

On the grass he won the NCAA cross-country title for the pandemic-delayed 2020 season, then won it again in the fall of 2021 in 28:33.1, a course record. Earlier that year he had finished second over 10,000m at the NCAA Outdoor Championships. He signed with Nike in December 2021 and moved up to the marathon within a year, running 2:08:16 for seventh in Chicago in October 2022.

Seven of Eight Marathons as the Top American

Mantz has been the first American man home in seven of his eight marathons, starting with his debut. The exception was Boston in 2023, where he finished 11th and third among Americans.

He won the U.S. Olympic Trials in 2:09:05 in February 2024, finished eighth in Paris that August as the top American in the Olympic marathon, and came back three months later to take sixth in New York in 2:09:00, just ahead of Clayton Young.

In January 2025 he ran 59:17 in Houston to take the American half-marathon record, and in April he finished fourth at Boston in 2:05:08. He won the U.S. 20K title and set the Beach to Beacon course record over the summer, then went to Chicago in October and ran patiently behind the leaders, reaching halfway in 1:02:19 and holding record pace into the final miles. His 2:04:43 for fourth was 55 seconds faster than the American record Khalid Khannouchi set in London in 2002.

Two Stress Fractures and a Slow Rebuild

On March 31, Mantz withdrew from the Boston Marathon, saying his fitness had “not progressed well enough.” It was the first spring or fall marathon he had missed since his debut in Chicago in 2022.

Mantz puts the injury down to doing too much after Chicago. “It was just overtraining, overuse, and had taken on a little bit too much,” he told David Monti of Race Results Weekly in an interview published by LetsRun in September. A run the day after the race felt so easy that his legs seemed to have done a hard long run rather than a marathon, which he said “gave me a false sense of confidence, and how recovered I was.” Three weeks later he paced his wife, Kylie, through her marathon debut in Fresno, and by mid-November his Strava was mostly elliptical and arc trainer sessions.

Hip and back pain turned out to be a sacral stress fracture, the pain returned once he started training again, and he ended up with two fractures in all. Along with Boston, they cost him the World Cross-Country Championships in Tallahassee in January, and he didn’t do any regular running again until the middle of May.

His first race back was the Falmouth Road Race on Aug. 16, where he finished fourth in 31:19, only two seconds behind Talbi, with both men under Alberto Salazar’s 1982 time on the course. “Falmouth was a really good test,” he told Race Results Weekly a month later. “I think it showed that I’m not there yet, but I’m on the right track.”

Five weeks after Falmouth he went to the front early at the World Half-Marathon Championships in Copenhagen, faded, and finished 12th in 1:00:08, a season’s best in his only half of the year. Sweden’s Andreas Almgren, who sat behind him early, won the title in 58:06 and will make his marathon debut in New York too.

The second recovery was a more careful one, with physical therapy, more sleep, better eating and less intensity in training. Eyestone also moved two of his weekly easy runs onto a LEVER, a treadmill attachment that takes about 15 percent of his body weight off his legs.

What to Expect From Conner Mantz in New York

“We’re trying to be more cautious this go-round,” Mantz told NBC Sports, describing the main goal as getting to the start “100% healthy.” He told CITIUS Mag he would only settle on a race goal with Eyestone on Oct. 30, two days before the start, and said, “If I can get to that start line healthy and build up enough mileage in my legs, I think I can do pretty well.”

New York’s course, with its bridges and its late climb up Fifth Avenue into Central Park, rewards the kind of patient running he showed in Chicago, and it has no pacemakers. The course record is 2:04:58, so the times from Chicago and Boston matter less here than racing sense. Mantz knows the course from 2024, when he finished 81 seconds behind the winner, Abdi Nageeye, who is back this year along with two-time champion Geoffrey Kamworor.

Kipruto has the fastest personal best in the field at 2:02:16, followed by Deresa Geleta (2:02:38) and CyBrian Kotut (2:03:22). Talbi and Mantz are the two fastest Americans in marathon history, and Talbi, who became a U.S. citizen in 2025, can represent the United States from 2027, which puts him in contention for the 2028 Olympic Marathon Trials in St. Louis on March 25, 2028. A healthy Mantz has made a habit of being the first American across the line, and New York is the first chance to see how much of the 2025 version has come back.

The professional men start at 9:05 a.m. ET on Sunday, Nov. 1. Our guide to watching the New York City Marathon has the full broadcast details, and we’ll be following the race on our live coverage page.