Toronto Waterfront Marathon Names an Elite Field Aimed at Its Course Record

Philemon Rono ran 2:05:00 in Toronto in 2019, and in the four editions run since, nobody has won the race inside 2:07. The elite field the Toronto Waterfront Marathon has named for Oct. 18 contains three men who have already run faster than that.

The prize structure gives away what the organizers are hoping for. Winning pays C$25,000, going under 2:07:00 adds another C$5,000, and there is a C$10,000 record bonus on top of that. Last October Leonard Langat took the title in 2:08:04, in what the race called uncharacteristically strong wind off the lake, and collected none of it.

Stephen Kissa is the fastest man on the list. His 2:04:48 dates from his marathon debut in Hamburg in 2022, when it was the Ugandan record too, and Jacob Kiplimo took that off him in April 2025 with 2:03:37 before pushing it to 2:00:28 this April, which says more about Kiplimo than about Kissa. At 37, Kissa trains in Kapchorwa with Joshua Cheptegei and the 2023 world marathon champion Victor Kiplangat. “I am running around 120km a week but will go up closer to 200km,” he told Paul Gains, who wrote the athlete profiles the race has been issuing, and on the race itself: “I am really happy if I can 2:03 or 2:04.”

Langat comes back a better runner than the one who won here. In May he was fourth at Cape Town in 2:05:26, the race where Mohamed Esa took more than three minutes off the course record with 2:04:55, and he was in the lead group at 40K until a drinks stop dropped him out of it. “If the weather is good that day I will try to improve my personal best,” is as far as he would go with the race.

Fanny Kiprotich is 24, has entered two marathons and won both, and went from 2:11:21 in Tallinn last September to 2:06:53 in Vienna in April, a large improvement to make in public. Toronto is his first race in North America and he wants to be under 2:06.

Noah Kipkemboi has finished third and then second in his two visits here, 24 seconds off Langat last year, and his 2:07:31 dates from the first of them. He trains at the Kaptagat camp with Eliud Kipchoge.

The Women’s Record Is Seven Seconds Away

Ayinadis Teshome ran a personal best of 2:20:51 in Seoul in March. The Toronto record is 2:20:44, and it belongs to Waganesh Mekasha, who the race says used to be one of her training partners. The same C$10,000 sits on that mark, plus C$5,000 for a women’s winner inside 2:22:30. Teshome is 23, and says she got interested by watching the race on YouTube in Addis Ababa after a stablemate, the 2022 champion Yihunilign Adane, told her about it. Ethiopians have taken the women’s title in seven of the ten races held since 2014.

Beatrice Cheserek made part of her living setting the pace for other people, including, she says, Rosemary Wanjiru’s win at Tokyo in 2023 and the London lead group last year. Her own debut, here in 2025, was a fifth place in 2:30:25 she attributes to a year of weaker training, and by February she was second in Seville in 2:21:56. This time somebody paces her. Her husband, Cyrus Kiplagat, has been given one of the two pacing jobs in her race, and she says it is the first of her marathons he has attended.

The Canadian Championship Is Decided in the Same Race

Toronto has doubled as the Athletics Canada marathon championship since 2015, worth C$8,000 to the winner, and this year’s entry is unusual for how many are attempting something new. John Gay made the Olympic steeplechase final in Tokyo with an 8:16.99 best, then left the event because the barriers kept injuring him. His debut in Ottawa in May was 2:14:16 for 12th, and he has no interest in repeating it. “And, being a Canadian national championships I will swing for whatever the time it is going to take to win a national championships,” he said. “I feel I have nothing to lose at this point in my career.”

The women’s title comes down to two runners who have overlapped for most of their careers and are both turning 40. Rachel Hannah, the defending champion, reaches it on Oct. 2 and has been running 160K weeks through the summer, with 180K to 190K planned for September; the 2:32:09 she is chasing is from Houston in 2016. Dayna Pidhoresky, who gets there in November, won the 2019 Olympic trials on this course in the 2:29:03 that is still her best, and took the McKirdy Micro Marathon in New York state in April in 2:31:24, more than three minutes clear.

Three of the Canadians have never run a marathon at all. Florence Caron won the national 10K this year and retained her 10,000m track title, with the Copenhagen half-marathon at the World Road Running Championships on Sept. 20 to get through first. Connor Black, the 2022 national cross-country champion, moved up because he does not believe he can reach an Olympic team on the track without a sponsor; the marathon, he says, has “80 spots” in it. Jeremy Coughler is a chiropractor with a young son, fits 110K weeks around his patients, and is aiming for 2:14 to 2:16.

None of this is the finished list. The race has been releasing entries since August and says athlete selection and notification run from May to September.