Elvis Cheboi and Maritu Ketema Head the Latest Additions to the Toronto Waterfront Marathon Field

The Toronto Waterfront Marathon has been naming its elite field a few runners at a time since August, and when MH went through the first group in September, Stephen Kissa (2:04:48) and defending champion Leonard Langat headed the men while Ayinadis Teshome led the women just seven seconds outside the course record. Five more runners have since been added for Oct. 18, including the 2023 men’s winner, the Ethiopian he beat by four seconds in Ottawa in May, and a medical student chasing his great-great-grandfather’s time from 1907.

Elvis Cheboi and Gizealew Ayana Meet Again After Ottawa

Elvis Cheboi’s best is still the 2:09:20 he ran to win Toronto in 2023, which would put him sixth among the men named so far, but he has a habit of beating people with faster times. In Ottawa on May 24, a cold and rainy morning, he sat in an eight-man group through a 1:04:24 halfway and only broke it at about 41K, winning in 2:09:22, four seconds ahead of Gizealew Ayana, with Rory Linkletter third, according to Race Results Weekly.

Ayana had run 2:06:48 for fifth in Dubai on Feb. 1, two and a half minutes quicker than Cheboi has ever gone. The 23-year-old won the Paris Marathon on his debut in 2023 and came to Toronto a year later with that title behind him, but he came apart in the second half and finished sixth in 2:10:49, with Cheboi eighth. “After half way, when the surges started I was struggling but I did my best to finish the race,” Ayana said in the profile the race published on Sept. 17, one of a series Paul Gains has written for the organizers. He trains under Nigatu Worku with his older brother Tsedat Abeje, who ran 2:05:47 in Hamburg in April, and with two former Toronto winners, Mulugeta Uma and Yihunilign Adane.

Cheboi, who turned 31 on Sept. 29, has been running 185 to 190 kilometers a week near Iten under coach James Ebenyo. He has more speed than his marathon times let on, with 10,000m silver behind Joshua Cheptegei at the 2014 World U20 Championships and a 59:15 half-marathon from Barcelona in 2022. “Now I think everything is going well. But I can’t say I will come and win, but I am in good shape,” he told the race. Both men will also have Langat to handle, who ran 2:05:26 for fourth at Cape Town in May, only 26 seconds slower than Philemon Rono’s 2019 course record.

Maritu Ketema Joins a Women’s Race Built Around the Record

Maritu Ketema ran 2:21:52 for fifth in Dubai, about four minutes faster than she had gone before, which leaves her 68 seconds outside Waganesh Mekasha’s course record of 2:20:44 from 2024, and she believes she can go well under it. “If the conditions are good, I believe I can run around 2:18:40,” she said in her race profile.

At 17, Ketema was racing the steeplechase, running 9:39.55 in Hengelo and winning African U20 silver the same year, until leg and back problems kept her out for two years and pushed her toward the roads. Her debut, in Malaga, was 2:29:51. She now trains in Gemedu Dedefo’s group outside Addis Ababa alongside Tigst Assefa and Shure Demise, who won Toronto for the third time last October. With Teshome’s 2:20:51 and Beatrice Cheserek’s 2:21:56 already on the list, three women in the field have bests within 72 seconds of the record, which carries a C$10,000 ($7,020) bonus on top of the C$25,000 ($17,550) winner’s prize.

Thomas Broatch Returns for the Canadian Title

The race is again the Athletics Canada marathon championship, worth C$8,000 ($5,620) to each national winner. Thomas Broatch took that title on his debut here in 2023 and in January 2025 ran 2:10:35 in Houston, which the organizers say makes him the 10th-fastest Canadian in history. Suspected appendicitis put him in a Vancouver hospital for four days two weeks before last year’s race, and since then the 27-year-old has run 2:13:43 at The Marathon Project in December and 2:19:00 for 18th in Ottawa, a race he started knowing he was short of fitness. He is back up to 190K weeks around his job as a software developer. “I think if I could run around 2:12 that would be a pretty good result,” he said.

Kristian Jamieson Is Racing Tom Longboat’s 1907 Time

Kristian Jamieson, from Niagara Falls, Ont., is a member of the Upper Cayuga First Nation and the great-great-grandson of Tom Longboat, the Onondaga runner who won the 1907 Boston Marathon in 2:24:24. Jamieson, in his final year of medical school at Western University, wants to beat that time in Toronto. He made his debut in 3:13:00 in 2023 and has since run 2:34:02 at Boston in April and 2:31:25 in Ottawa in May.

Longboat set his mark over 24.5 miles, the length of the Boston course in 1907, an average of about 5:54 per mile, and Jamieson already ran faster than that pace in Ottawa. Matching 2:24:24 over the full 26.2 miles means averaging about 5:30 per mile (3:25 per kilometer). “2:24 is just the beginning. Once I hit 2:24 I am looking to go sub 2:20,” he told the organizers.