Sharon Lokedi and John Korir return to the Hopkinton starting line on Monday morning with the weight of last year’s Boston Marathon still on their shoulders and the boston marathon route once again set for a race that could turn on one move. Lokedi won the women’s race in 2:17:22. Korir took the men’s title in 2:04:45. Now both defending champions are back for the 130th Boston Marathon, a 26.2-mile race that has a way of punishing anyone who waits too long.
The field is deep enough to make that danger real. Seven of last year’s top-10 finishers are entered again, including Tanzania’s Alphonce Felix Simbu, who was second, and Kenya’s CyBrian Kotut, who placed third. Benson Kipruto, the 2021 Boston winner, is back for the first time in three years after adding Olympic bronze in Paris to a résumé that already includes victories in Chicago, Tokyo and New York. Dakotah Popehn, the top U.S. finisher at the Paris Games, is also in the lineup, while Hellen Obiri — who won Boston in 2022 and 2023 before Lokedi beat her last year — will instead run in London next Sunday.
Last year’s results show how quickly Boston can flip from chaos to control. Korir was tripped at the start and then ran the last six miles unchallenged. Lokedi did something even rarer on this course: she broke Buzunesh Deba’s women’s record by more than two and a half minutes, a mark that had stood since 2014. Geoffrey Mutai’s men’s course record of 2:03:02 from 2011 remains untouched, and that says as much about Boston as any weather forecast ever could.
The race is famous for tricky topography, mercurial weather and the absence of pacers, which is why course records there are notoriously elusive. A forecast calling for temperatures in the 40s with a decent tailwind could make this one faster than most editions, but no one on the line is talking as if conditions alone will decide it. Korir said he is thinking about going for it again if things go well, and added that everyone who comes to Boston wants to win. Simbu was more measured, saying only that he hopes to run well.
Kipruto may be the one with the clearest edge in the late miles. He said running in the United States feels like a second home and that winning Boston before gives him an advantage because he knows where to attack and where to run smooth. Popehn, meanwhile, described the women’s race as one that can force others to react to Lokedi’s decisions rather than their own. She said Boston does not give her the luxury of running her own race and that she follows what Lokedi is doing that day. On a course where patience often matters as much as speed, that kind of adaptation may decide who is still standing when the crowds reach Boylston Street.
