Kenyan Eliud Kipchoge, Olympic champion and four-time winner of the London Marathon, will be the great absentee in this year’s edition of the London race, where his compatriot Brigid Kosgei, in the female event, and the Ethiopian Shura Kitata, in the men’s, they will try to repeat last year’s titles.
Kipchoge, who already gave up in 2020 when an ear problem relegated him to eighth place, will not be in London as a break after winning Olympic gold in Sapporo, so he will not be able to add a fifth wound to his record or improve his record of 2:02:37, the test record.
The opposition to succeed the man who has won the London race the most times, is led by Kitata, who won last year stopping the clock just one second before his pursuer, the Kenyan Vincent Kipchumba.
However, the Ethiopian does not arrive in the best moment of the season in London, after a muscle injury suffered two weeks before the Olympics and that forced him to retire in Sapporo before the tenth kilometer of the test.
“If the race is very fast, I can suffer,” he said at the press conference prior to the event.
With more options his compatriot appears Birhanu legese, twice winner of the Tokyo marathon and second in Berlin in 2019, and is that his mark in the German capital (2:02:48) is the third best in history. “My plan is to break the race record,” advanced Legese, who did not participate in the Olympics.
After last year’s pandemic test, delayed until October, with a completely different route than usual and without public or popular test, this year’s one practically recovers to normal. The race will start at 8:45 a.m. local time in Greenwich Bay, in the classic Cutty Sark, to finish in Westminster, after 42 kilometers that they cover London thoroughly.
In the women’s event, Kosgei aspires to a third consecutive title, something that only the German has achieved Katrin Dörre-Heinig between 1992 and 1994, and does so after taking silver at Tokyo 2020.
“After the Games the truth is that I was very tired, but I have made a lot of recovery until I was well and that is why I have come to London to give it my all,” explained the runner, who currently holds the world record for distance.
Their competition will be led by the Israeli, Lonah Chemtai Salpeter, who dropped from 2:18 to take the Tokyo marathon last year, along with Roza Dereje, whose personal best is 2:18:30 and finished fourth in the Games, and Birhane Dibaba, who also knows what it’s like to stop the clock below 2:19.