2026 New York City Marathon Elite Field: Weini Kelati

Weini Kelati has broken the American half-marathon record three times, and on Nov. 1 she will run the full distance for the first time. The 29-year-old makes her marathon debut at the New York City Marathon, in a women’s race that lost its fastest entrant only this month.

New York already knows her fairly well. Her results there since she turned to the roads include a second place at the 2025 Mini 10K, and NYRR’s field announcement counts her “first or second in four of six New York Road Runners races.” Last November she rode through the five boroughs in the lead vehicle of the women’s race while Hellen Obiri broke the course record.

Weini Kelati by the Numbers

Personal Bests

• Marathon: none yet (debut Nov. 1, 2026)
• Half-marathon: 1:06:04 (Barcelona, Feb. 15, 2026)
• 10,000m: 30:33.82 (San Juan Capistrano, Calif., March 16, 2024)
• 5,000m: 14:35.43 (Eugene, Ore., May 25, 2024)
• 3,000m: 8:32.50 (Oslo, June 15, 2023)
• 10K (road): 30:49 (New York, June 7, 2025). The Mini 10K course drops too much to count for records, so her official best is 31:18 from Boston in 2021.

Records

• American half-marathon record: 1:06:04, Barcelona, 2026. Still current. It is the third time she has set it, after 1:06:25 in Houston in January 2024 and 1:06:09 in Houston in January 2025.
• American 15K and 10-mile records: 46:32 and 50:05, both split times from her 1:06:09 in Houston in January 2025. Since beaten, by Taylor Roe at the Cherry Blossom 10 Mile in April 2025 (46:24 and 49:53).
• American women-only 10K road record: 31:18, Boston 10K for Women, Oct. 16, 2021. Since beaten, by Roe’s 30:56 split at that same Cherry Blossom race.

Championship Results

• Olympic Games, Paris 2024: eighth in the 10,000m, 30:49.98 (top American)
• World Road Running Championships, Copenhagen 2026: sixth in the half-marathon, 1:06:35
• World U20 Championships, Eugene 2014: eighth in the 3,000m for Eritrea, 9:12.32

Titles and Wins

• 2024 U.S. Olympic Trials 10,000m champion, 31:41.07
• 2019 NCAA Division I cross-country champion
• 2019 NCAA Division I 10,000m champion
• 2017 NCAA cross-country team champion with New Mexico
• 2015 Foot Locker Cross Country champion
• Road wins include the Boston 10K for Women (2021) and the Great Cow Harbor 10K (2023)

Background

• Age: 29 (born Dec. 1, 1996)
• Born: Eritrea
• Represents: United States (citizen since June 2021)
• Base: Flagstaff, Ariz.
• Coach: Stephen Haas
• Sponsor: Nike (since February 2026; Under Armour from 2020 to 2025)
• College: University of New Mexico, 13-time All-American
• High school: Heritage High School, Leesburg, Va.

From the World Juniors to New Mexico

Kelati was 17 and racing for Eritrea when she came to Eugene, Ore., for the 2014 World Junior Championships, with a plan she had shared with no one. She placed eighth in the 3,000m, then stayed behind in the U.S. and applied for asylum. Asked about it by the Associated Press before the Paris Games, she kept the details to herself: “I wanted to chase my dream, and I felt like this was a good opportunity to support my family.” Her mother and two brothers remained in Eritrea, and she did not see her mother again until a reunion in Uganda eight years later.

Family connections took her to Leesburg, Va., where she lived with a relative and enrolled at Heritage High School, and inside 18 months she was the best high school cross-country runner in the country. She won the Foot Locker national title in San Diego in December 2015 by less than a second, then set a national high school indoor record for 5,000m that winter.

The University of New Mexico calls her the most decorated athlete in the program’s history. She helped the Lobos win the 2017 NCAA cross-country team title, collected 13 All-American honors, and in 2019 won the individual NCAA titles in both cross-country and the 10,000m. She turned professional in December 2020 with Under Armour’s Dark Sky Distance group in Flagstaff. Her U.S. citizenship came through in June 2021, only days before the Olympic Trials in Eugene, and she did not make the team for Tokyo.

Three years later she won the 2024 Trials 10,000m in 31:41.07 and went on to finish eighth in the Olympic final in 30:49.98, the top American in a race Beatrice Chebet won in 30:43.25. “Sometimes, our dreams get delayed,” she told the AP that summer, “until they happen at the right time.”

Three Runs at the Half-Marathon Record

Her first American half-marathon record came in Houston in January 2024, where she ran 1:06:25, and a year later she returned to the same race and lowered it by 16 seconds, setting new 15K and 10-mile marks en route. In Barcelona this February she brought it down again to 1:06:04, finishing second behind Loice Chemnung.

That Barcelona run came only days after she left Under Armour and Dark Sky for Nike. She kept training in Flagstaff alongside Abraham Tsegay, and her agent, Stephen Haas, told LetsRun at the time that her coaching arrangement had not yet been settled. Haas has since taken on the job himself. Sharon Lokedi was another of his athletes when she won New York on her marathon debut in 2022, a link CITIUS Mag pointed to when the field was announced.

She was fourth at the Cherry Blossom 10 Mile in April in 50:46, and on Sept. 20 she finished sixth at the World Road Running Championships half-marathon in Copenhagen in 1:06:35, on the day Agnes Ngetich ran a women-only world record out front. Emma Grace Hurley was the first American home, 12 seconds ahead of Kelati, with Jess McClain 18 seconds behind her in seventh.

What to Expect From Weini Kelati in New York

Three weeks after Copenhagen, Hurley ran 2:20:47 in Chicago, the fastest marathon debut ever by an American woman, and she did it off a half-marathon best 19 seconds slower than Kelati’s. That gives a rough sense of what Kelati’s range might be, though New York is a far tougher course than Chicago’s flat grid, with five bridges, no pacemakers and a long drag up Fifth Avenue before the finish in Central Park. Finishing position usually matters more here than the time.

Sifan Hassan withdrew earlier this month after an illness interrupted her training, and Fiona O’Keeffe had surgery on a torn hamstring tendon, as MH reported. That leaves Obiri, who won last year in 2:19:51 and ran 2:15:53 in London in April, as the fastest woman on the start list. Sheila Chepkirui, the 2024 champion, and Julia Paternain, the world championship bronze medalist from Tokyo last year, are also entered, along with McClain, who ran 2:20:49 in Boston in April.

Shalane Flanagan’s third place in 2018 is still the most recent top-three finish by an American woman in New York, and FloTrack’s preview raised the case of Molly Huddle, who was third on her own debut there in 2016. In comments published by CITIUS Mag, Kelati said that seeing the race up close was what made her want to run it. “When I see the marathon, it makes me feel small,” she said, adding that New York now felt like “the right moment and this is the right place to do it for me.”

The professional women start on Staten Island at 8:35 a.m. ET on Sunday, Nov. 1. Everything else you need for race day is in our New York City Marathon guide, including how to watch, and we will be following the race on our live blog.