On Sunday, March 2nd, as more than 30,000 runners take to the streets of Tokyo—some elite, others not so, but isn’t it such a special person who can finish a marathon? —one of them, Kenya’s Benson Kipruto, will be seeking to defend his crown as the Men’s Tokyo Marathon conqueror, a fete he accomplished last year, setting a new record for the race, 2:02: 16, and shattering Eliud Kipchoge’s 2022 winning record of 2:02:40.
After his win in Tokyo, Kipruto became an Olympic bronze medalist at the Paris games, where he ran 2:07:00, finishing behind the race’s winner, Ethiopia’s Tamirat Tola, and second-placed, Belgium’s Bashir Abdi.
Kipruto is expected to face stiff competition from fellow East African Birhanu Legese, who will be seeking to set the record as the first three-time winner of the elite men’s race, having won it in 2019 and 2020. Legese holds the world’s ninth-fastest marathon time, which he clocked at the 2019 Berlin Marathon. However, his personal best wasn’t fast enough to win the title, as he came second to fellow Ethiopian Kenenisa Bekele. Bekele’s winning time of 2:01:41 became the world’s fastest marathon record until three years later when Kenya’s Eliud Kipchoge ran a stunning 2:01:09 at the same venue. A year later, the late Kenyan Kelvin Kiptum shook the world with a 2:00:35 run at the Chicago Marathon. No one has outrun Kiptum’s time.
Sunday’s marathon in Tokyo will kick off this year’s Abbott World Marathon Majors, the world’s most renowned marathons: Tokyo, Boston, London, Berlin, Chicago, and New York. The next Abbot World Marathon Majors will be the Boston Marathon on Monday, April 21, 2025.
It will be a delight to watch the duel between Kipruto and Legese on Sunday. If Kipruto, who won the Boston Marathon in 2021 and the Chicago Marathon in 2022 and was runner-up in Chicago in 2023, were to triumph on Sunday, he would follow Legese’s footsteps as the second person ever to win the Tokyo Marathon’s men’s elite title back to back.