By Monday morning, runners will leave Hopkinton for the 2026 Boston Marathon. The professional men start at 9:37 a.m. Eastern, the professional women at 9:47 a.m. Most of the pre-race coverage has landed on two questions. Can Benson Kipruto take back the title from John Korir? And can an American woman finally end an eight-year drought against defending champion Sharon Lokedi?
Both are fair questions. They also leave out the athletes most likely to decide how the race actually ends.
The men’s race is deeper than a two-man rematch
Kipruto won Boston in 2021 and has since added Chicago (2022), Tokyo (2024), and New York (2025). He is the only man to have won all three American World Marathon Majors. His 2:02:16 from Tokyo is the fastest personal best in the field.
“Boston holds a special place in my heart,” Kipruto said heading into race week. His record backs that up.
Korir won here last year in 2:04:45, the second-fastest winning time in race history. Since then, he has lowered his personal best to 2:02:24 at Valencia in December. His brother Wesley won Boston in 2012, making them the first siblings to both hold the title. Eight seconds separate Korir’s PB from Kipruto’s. On a course as variable as Boston, eight seconds is noise.
What the two-man framing misses is the rest of the field. Alphonce Felix Simbu of Tanzania pushed Korir to the line last year, finishing second in 2:05:04. He then won the World Championship marathon in Tokyo by three one-hundredths of a second. Simbu is a reigning global champion who has now proven he can win tactical races down to the meter. On an unrhythmic course like Boston, that matters more than a fast Valencia time.
Abdi Nageeye is the other name worth holding onto. The 36-year-old Dutch record holder ran 2:04:20 at London last spring and won New York in 2024 at age 35. He set a Dutch record at the NYC Half in 59:44 last year. On a course that rewards patient, tactical running, Nageeye is having the best stretch of his career at an age when most marathoners are slowing down.
A debut that could blow the race apart
Nicholas Kipkorir ran 58:08 for the half marathon in March. That is a top-25 time all-time. The theoretical marathon equivalent sits under 2:02.
Kipkorir is 27 years old, ranked fourth in the world in men’s road running. He is a Diamond League Final winner, a Commonwealth silver medalist, and an Olympic 5,000m finalist. He has never raced a marathon. Boston on Monday will be his debut.
Boston is not a forgiving debut course. The first four miles drop hundreds of feet, and runners who ride that downhill too aggressively tend to pay for it later. The Newton Hills arrive between miles 16 and 21, at exactly the point where a first-time marathoner has never raced before.
Kipkorir’s fitness is not the question. His pacing discipline is. Debuts of this caliber tend to produce either a spectacular implosion or a spectacular win. If his team has paced him correctly, the course record could fall.
The American men are better than the headlines suggest
The American picture shifted on April 1, when Conner Mantz withdrew. Mantz cited a sacral stress fracture suffered after his Chicago American record run last fall. He said his fitness had not recovered to the level he expects of himself. The coverage since has treated that withdrawal as the end of the American story. It isn’t.
Zouhair Talbi won Houston in January in 2:05:45, the fourth-fastest marathon ever run by an American. He then finished second at the NYC Half in March in 59:41. Talbi finished fifth at Boston in 2023 in 2:08:35, which means he already knows this course. The runner who will be on the start line Monday is minutes faster than the one who finished fifth three years ago.
Clayton Young, the U.S. fourth-placer at the 2024 Olympic Trials, has been training alongside Mantz in Utah for years. He is the other name to watch in the American pack, and the kind of runner who tends to move up as the pace hardens through the Newton Hills.
Between Talbi’s current form and Young’s experience running with elite company, the American men’s contingent is not the afterthought it has been treated as.
One Of The strongest women’s field in a generation
Sharon Lokedi returns to defend the course record she set in 2025, a 2:17:22 that broke the previous mark by more than two minutes. Her official personal best is 2:20:07, set at New York in 2022. Boston times are not ratified for world record purposes because of the course’s net elevation drop.
Lokedi is the favorite and she knows it. Hellen Obiri, the 2023 and 2024 champion, chose London this year. That makes the 2026 Boston title, in B.A.A. terms, Lokedi’s to lose.
The B.A.A. has called the American women’s field potentially the strongest in the race’s history. Thirteen American women with personal bests under 2:26 will line up in Hopkinton. The last American woman to win Boston was Des Linden, in 2018, during some of the worst weather in race history.
Emily Sisson, the American record holder at 2:18:29, is making her Boston debut at 34. Her 2022 Chicago time still tops the American list. After a difficult Olympic year and a racing break, she returned at New York last fall and ran 2:25:05, leading the American women home in a loaded field. The Olympic year was the reset. The NYC run was the signal that she is back.
Jess McClain is the American who already knows this course runs fast for her. She went from 2:25:46 at the Olympic Trials to 2:22:43 at Boston last year, a three-minute-plus personal best on a course that does not usually yield fast times. She finished seventh overall, first American. In a field where attention goes to the biggest PBs, she is the runner the others should be watching.
Calli Hauger-Thackery of Great Britain has quietly won three marathons in four months. She took California International in late 2024, Honolulu in December, and Houston in January at 2:24:17. She finished sixth at Boston last April in 2:22:38. No woman in the field is entering on a hotter streak.
The international depth runs further. Irine Cheptai of Kenya owns a 2:17:51 PB from Chicago 2024. Workenesh Edesa of Ethiopia ran 2:17:55 and won Hamburg last spring. Bedatu Hirpa of Ethiopia won Dubai in 2025. Four-time Olympic track medalist Vivian Cheruiyot brings a 2:18:31 to the start line.
Linden returns for one more
Des Linden, the 2018 champion and the last American woman to win Boston, returns for her 13th go at the race. She announced that 2025 would be her final appearance here, then changed her mind.
She arrives on tired legs. Linden recently completed the Marathon des Sables, a 250-kilometer stage race across the Sahara. A competitive finish would surprise no one who has watched her career, but the result, in her own framing, is beside the point.
