Everything you need to know about this weekend’s big event in the British capital
As the London Marathon reverts to its traditional spring date, the 2023 event on Sunday (April 23) looks poised to be bigger and better than ever. All of the elite and wheelchair race winners from the last event in October return to defend their titles with many more world-class distance runners capable of claiming their crown. If you enjoy trying to pick winners, last weekend’s Grand National horse race at Aintree was probably easier to predict.
Last October the elite races were won by Amos Kipruto of Kenya and Yalemzerf Yehualaw of Ethiopia with Swiss duo Marcel Hug and Catherine Debrunner taking wheelchair victories. With the Boston Marathon six days before London, the British event is never likely to get everyone it wants. Most notably, Eliud Kipchoge chose to run Boston rather than chase his fifth London victory. Nevertheless, London can be pretty proud of its line-ups.
As well as the defending champions, Kenenisa Bekele of Ethiopia and Kelvin Kiptum of Kenya both have sub-2:02 PBs on their running resume. There’s also world champion Tamirat Tola and fellow Ethiopian and 2:02 man Birhanu Legese.
It is 30 years since a British man won the London Marathon. In 1993 Eamonn Martin stormed to victory and has told AW he doesn’t want to go to his grave being the last male domestic winner of this iconic event. We’re unlikely to see the 30-year curse broken this year but there are high hopes for Emile Cairess doing something special in his debut, while Phil Sesemann, Weynay Ghebresilassie, Chris Thompson and of course British record-holder Mo Farah in possibly his final major race will be determined to make an impact too.
The women’s field is even more stacked with Yalemzerf defending his title against world record-holder Brigid Kosgei of Kenya, Olympic champion Peres Jepchirchir of Kenya, Dutch debutante Sifan Hassan, plus Ethiopians Almaz Ayana and Genzebe Dibaba.
Eilish McColgan leads the British challenge in the women’s race and if she can master the marathon on her debut and overcome the fuelling problems that saw her scratch from last year’s race then she could give Paula Radcliffe’s British record of 2:15:25 a fright. That performance by Radcliffe celebrates its 20th anniversary this month and, while it was described as a ‘quantum leap’ in 2003, it could be made to look fairly ordinary on Sunday if the afore-mentioned elites lace up their…
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