From Hopkinton To Ramona ⏱️

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Compiled by David Melly, Paul Snyder, and Audrey Allen

Can An American Win This Year’s Boston Marathon? 🦄

The 129th Boston Marathon is just five days away (if you’re reading this in between obsessive checks of Monday’s weather forecast, you knew that already), and the vibes are undeniably high.

Sometimes, the leadup to Boston can feel like a bit of a slog, both physically—local runners brave winter long runs and an unrelentingly rainy New England spring—and mentally—online nonsense around qualifying times and poster placement is omnipresent—but once the event itself rolls around, the city quickly becomes enveloped in a weeklong celebration of America’s Marathon. With all due respect to New York and Chicago, the Boston Marathon just feels a bit different, enveloping both the city and the broader running community, a rare instance of our niche sport finding its place in the hearts and minds of mainstream sports fans.

This year’s edition also happens to coincide with the 250th anniversary of the Battle of Lexington and Concord, celebrated annually in Massachusetts as Patriots’ Day-slash-Marathon Monday. And while Paul Revere was riding in the opposite direction a few miles north of the course, the nexus of Boston as the country’s oldest marathon and the symbolic birthplace of the nation (with all the complex feelings that status currently evokes) makes the prospect of an American victory on Boylston Street all the more exciting.

It’s been seven years and 36 races since Des Linden’s legendary 2018 Boston run made her the last American to win a World Marathon Major. On the men’s side, the most recent American WMM victor was Galen Rupp (at Chicago in 2017), but the last time an American man was Boston champ was over a decade ago, when Meb Keflezighi reclaimed the celebratory nature of the race the year after the trauma of the 2013 bombing.

It’s been a while… so Conner Mantz’s comments on the CITIUS MAG Podcast last week about his odds of victory got lips a-flapping. There’s nothing American distance running fans would love to see more than a runner (or two) break the tape on Monday, and with Mantz coming off a national record performance in the half marathon in January, expectations are sky-high for his return to the 26.2-mile distance. Mantz will enter the race with a big spotlight—perhaps his biggest yet—but he’s also not the only contender for Team USA with an outside shot at a spot on the podium, or better.

Really, this conversation breaks down into two questions: 1. Which Americans have the potential for a Major-winning performance? and 2. Can they beat the other contenders to pull off the win?

On the men’s side, the answer to the first question is relatively straightforward. The top three American marathoners of 2024 (at least on the WMM circuit) are all toeing the line in Hopkinton: Conner Mantz, Clayton Young, and CJ Albertson. Mantz has the most obvious argument for the highest ceiling, having broken 60 minutes in the half twice this spring and earning top American honors in NYC last fall and Paris last summer. Mantz has “only” run 2:07:47, a few minutes off the caliber of a typical WMM-winning athlete, but his 2:08:12 performance at the Olympics (a hilly, un-rabbited race like Boston) has to be worth a few minutes faster on a flatter course. And it’s not crazy to speculate that the 28-year-old in just the fourth year of his marathoning career may be on the verge of a true breakthrough. It’s entirely possible that this time next year we may look back on Mantz’s half marathon runs—which convert to 2:05-mid on the World Athletics scoring tables—as early indicators of a 2025 season for the ages.

Can a 2:05 runner win Boston in 2025? Absolutely. When Benson Kipruto won Boston in 2021, his PB was 2:05:13 (it’s now 2:02). 2022-2023 champ Evans Chebet has a 2:03:00 from the mythically-fast Valencia, but his next fastest performance after that is 2:05. Similarly, defending champ Sisay Lemma sports a daunting 2:01:48 best next to his name, but that time also comes from Valencia and Lemma’s record outside Spain indicates he’s more consistently a 2:04-type runner.

Is Mantz favored to win? Absolutely not. But it’s not out of the realm of possibility.

Albertson and Young are likely longer shots, as neither has shown the signs of ascendance that Mantz has this spring. But Young trains side-by-side with Mantz, and often finishes races within a few steps of his partner, so he’s at least worthy of a mention in any conversation that involves the younger BYU alum. And although Young has never beaten Mantz head-to-head in a marathon, there’s a “law of large numbers” argument to be made that, after so many close finishes, Young is due. But that seems more likely to happen in a race where the duo finishes just inside the top-10, rather than both landing on the podium.

CJ Albertson is, as always, more of a wild card. The self-coached Californian first got on the radars of many a casual fan with his audacious front-running in Boston in 2021, but in the year’s since he’s backed up his unconventional training and racing antics with one of the more consistent resumes of sustained success on the roads, finishing five marathons last year between 2:08:17 and 2:10:57. In normal years, that likely won’t be enough to end up on top, but Albertson fits the Meb Keflezighi-Yuki Kawauchi mode well: a dark horse gamer who could capitalize on crazy weather or a well-timed sneak attack to come away with an unexpected victory. And Boston is one of the races where that seems to happen more than anywhere else.

In order to pull off such a feat, one of these three would have to take down a field that includes former champs Lemma and Chebet, reigning Chicago champ John Korir, and rising star Daniel Mateiko. 2013/2015 champ Lelisa Desisa is also in the field, but hasn’t finished a marathon since 2020 and is riding an unenviable streak of five DNFs. And the biggest unknown of all is the marathon debut of 2x World 5000m champ Muktar Edris, finally moving up to 26.2 at age 31. If Boston turns into a test of pure speed, either with a hot pace from the start or a blistering pace at the finish, all of these guys falling victim to Mantz et al feels like a tall order. But if Boston turns into a secret third thing, with random attacks over the hills and packs splintering than re-forming, none of these guys (with the exception of Chebet possibly returning to his 2022 form) is unbeatable.

The women’s race features fewer obvious frontrunners on Team USA but a collection of intriguing names nevertheless. The fastest entrants by personal best are Sara Hall (2:20:32) and Keira D’Amato (2:19:12), both looking to reignite the flame after unspectacular 2024 seasons. Hall completed four marathons last year, the best of which was a fifth-place run at the Olympic Trials, but hasn’t finished in the top ten of a WMM since Tokyo in 2022. D’Amato spent most of the 2024 season honing her speed over shorter distances after a DNF at the Trials, winning a U.S. road title over 20km in New Haven and clocking a 31:05.31 10,000m on the track, but she hasn’t posted a truly strong marathon finish since her epic string of success in 2022. Hall and D’Amato are both competing as masters now (Hall is 42 and D’Amato turned 40 last fall), but citing age as a limiting factor in a race that includes Edna Kiplagat feels foolish.

Emma Bates is one of the most consistent marathoners the U.S. has to offer, and her 2:22:10 fifth-place performance from 2023 was faster than last year’s winning time of 2:22:37. After missing the Olympic Trials with an injury, Bates recorded two solid finishes at Boston (12th) and Chicago (11th), but she’s likely hungry for a return to the podium after getting within one place and less than two minutes from a victory in Chicago in 2021. Others, like Dakotah Popehn, Jackie Gaughan, Gabi Rooker, and Jess McClain have made strong cases that they belong in the top echelon of American marathoning, but aside from Popehn’s daring run at the Paris Olympics, there isn’t a lot of indication to suggest that anyone from that group could make the jump from top American contention to battling for the overall win.

But ultimately, any conversation around American women’s winning potential is burying the lede: anyone, from any nation, who wants to win this year’s Boston Marathon has to go through Hellen Obiri first. Obiri is the two-time defending champion who can win any sort of way, has yet to log a truly bad marathon, and by all accounts is fit and stronger than ever. Five other women have completed the Boston threepeat (three have done it three years in a row), but none* have done so in the Abbott major era (Rita Jeptoo crossed the finish line first three times but her 2014 title was stripped for doping). The only real knock against Obiri is the odds against threepeats, but if anyone can do it, she can.

Beyond Obiri, the two women most likely to beat her are also going to be pretty dang hard for the Americans to beat. Amane Beriso finished behind Obiri in 2023, is the reigning World champ in the marathon, and the fifth fastest woman of all time. Sharon Lokedi finished behind Obiri last year and is one of the few women to beat her head-to-head in a marathon, during both their debuts at New York in 2022. Lokedi is riding the high of a victory at the NYC Half, and while Beriso hasn’t raced since the Olympic Marathon, she’s remarkably consistent, finishing top five in every marathon she’s contested since 2018. It’s incredibly difficult to imagine an American beating any of that trio, let alone all three.

The best bet at a surprise win would likely be one or more Americans sticking in the mix in a kicker’s race. Even after cutting out the topsy-turvy 2018 year, the women’s race in Boston has turned into a real crawl several times over the last decade, with winning times of 2:24:55 in 2015, 2:29:19 in 2016, and 2:25:09 in 2021. Often times, a battle over the last 10km still shakes out to a battle of the fittest (that’s how Obiri won both times), but if the race hits halfway in 67 minutes, it’s highly likely that the Americans will simply be too far out of reach to claw their way back over the Newton hills.

The simple conclusion to this long, drawn out exercise is that betting on an American to win Boston this year will still get you pretty long odds, but stranger things have happened. The beauty of championship-style racing over tough courses is that the variability of race outcomes increases, and you get much more interesting results as a result. Before Sharon Lokedi was a NYC Marathon champion, she was an 10,000m specialist with a couple solid halves under her belt. Before Des Linden’s 2018 title, her resume looked a heckuva lot like Emma Bates’s does right now. And before Ryan Hall was a sub-2:05 runner, he was an up-and-coming young road racer with a lot of talent and a penchant for grinding in workouts. Sound familiar?

The only way to know for sure is to run the dang race, and the best way to do your part is to tune in or show up to the course and scream at your preferred racer (American or otherwise, from behind a TV screen or a metal barrier, as loud as possible either way) as they make their way from Hopkinton to Back Bay. When the dust settles, we might just get another entry in the history books from a new American hero.

Throw Town Threw Down 🥏

At the conclusion of the NCAA cross country season, we tapped CITIUS MAG throws correspondent Paul Hof-Mahoney (a.k.a. Paulie Throws) to write a reflective piece on his first time keeping up with collegiate cross country. Given that our readership skews heavily distance-focused, we felt it would be interesting to hear an “outside” perspective on a sport so many of us have been intimately familiar with since high school, if not earlier.

This spring, we decided to flip the script, sending distance runner and burgeoning throws fan Audrey Allen to pack her bags, venture from sunny Southern California to windy rural Oklahoma, and provide us with a scene report on a place that has quickly become the center of the throwing universe. With Paulie Throws as her guide, Audrey was quickly immersed in the sights, sounds, and world record-setting atmosphere of Ramona, Oklahoma’s Millican Field. These are her findings:

As the plane lifted off from LAX en route to Tulsa my mind began to race with images of the chaos inherent to covering a track meet: trying to snag photos or get interviews of multiple athletes… when there’s at least three events going on at once… some of which take just 10 seconds and change, and every event is stacked with names. 

Then I remembered that the four-day competition I was heading to was limited to the discus, hammer, javelin, and shot put. Things would look a bit different. The format is more “one athlete at a time, one flight at a time.” And in most cases there would be about two events a day, with pauses between throws and six tries to get the right shot. 

The only chaos I was anticipating would come from the wind. But at Ramona, the wind is kind of the point. If a typical track meet and the typical track athlete—can be described as frenzied, a throws-only affair— most throwers and throwing events, based on my own experience covering and participating in the sport, should be decidedly more chill.

These suspicions were confirmed regularly throughout the 2025 Oklahoma Throws Series World Invitational. It wasn’t ever verbalized, but just from witnessing these athletes’ auras, I think it was felt on their side, too. 

The chillness was there in the nonchalant way Mykolas Alekna threw something in warmups in excess of 70m (despite clipping the net). It was there when he then proceeded to reset his own world record a day before its first birthday with a 74.89m throw to kick off his series, and only gave the camera a “thumbs up” upon seeing the measurement populate the result screen. It was there when all Matty Denny could do was celebrate alongside Alekna after his 74.78m fifth round throw, which would have been the world record had it come before his rival’s historic mark. And even when the Lithuanian thrower and redshirt-junior at Cal sealed the deal with a 75.56m “toss” that was just a hair away from the right sector line, he made it look… well… chill. 

Maybe it’s because it’s hard to get too animated about any one throw when there are so many incredible tosses flying all over the place. If you got caught up in the two history makers up top, you missed a lot of insane results farther down the list. Sam Mattis inched centimetered his way closer to the American record with a 71.27m mark and Lawrence Okoye, Clemens Prüfer, and Mika Sosna all eclipsed the 70m line for the first times in their careers.

The women’s discus competition on Saturday was the best American history, as four of the five best throwers in national history—Val Allman (73.52m, AR), Lagi Tausaga-Collins (70.72m, 2nd all-time), Jayden Ulrich (69.39m, 3rd all-time), and Veronica Fraley (68.72m, 5th all-time)—set new PBs. The competition went by fast, but it didn’t feel rushed. The expectations were high, but the pressure felt low. The head-to-head battles were present, but rather than in-your-face competitiveness, the athletes embraced one another with an unmistakable degree of camaraderie. Again: exceptional chill in the face of history-making performance.

And yet, the energy never wavered, beginning with former world record holder Mac Wilkins’s honorary throw (think: the ceremonial first pitch at a baseball game) to kick off the weekend’s premier discus flights. 

Throughout the multiple-day meet, the several hundred fans gathered within a couple feet of whichever of six cages Throw Town founder Caleb Seal determined was optimal for the wind conditions at that point in time. Their instant reactions crescendoed with the path of the disc and the celebratory applauses for each and every athlete could be heard by the cows a couple 70m+ throws just behind the field. And back to this whole “chill” vibe check: most of them were sitting in lawn chairs, comfortably reminiscent of the sidelines of my early adolescent club soccer games. 

It didn’t matter if it was flight A or flight D, there were throwers sporting everything from freshly-unboxed pro kits to sweats and a t-shirt. There were sponsored and unsponsored athletes, Paris Olympians and garage gym heroes, collegians and 45-year-old Melina Robert-Michon still launching discs 64 meters. Everyone seemed to know everyone, and it’s hard to beat the shared energy of an entire facility waiting for a measurement to be read (which also makes for really great content). There was a spectrum of talent, featuring some of the most impressive throwers in human history, but the headliners didn’t steal the show. 

One reason for that was Kara Winger’s entertaining and all-encompassing commentary as a flight coordinator/in-“stadium” announcer that truly brought depth and insight to what can typically be pretty standard officiating stuff. The storyline of each athlete felt palpable in a way I’d never experienced at a track and field meet before, and it extended far beyond just the discus. (For a more comprehensive recap, check out a 35-minute yap sesh between Paulie Throws and Winger.)  

I haven’t seen as many competitors personally thank meet organizers as I did this week. If I had a dollar for every time someone launched a PB, had an eye-watering reaction, then went to hug Mr. Throw Town himself, I’d easily be able to pay off my sizable Uber debt from this weekend. 

Let’s talk about that now-world famous wind that likely contributed to so many of these “thank yous.” Did you know that you actually want to be throwing into a headwind for the disc to go farther? Or that if you’re a lefty and the wind is coming from the right, it will actually slow down the counterclockwise rotation and restrict the distance of the implement thrown? Now you do, and if you’re the type of nerd interested in learning more about the intersection of physics and track and field, you’re in luck. Because for the second year in a row, the World Invitational hosted Dr. Kristof Kipp and his team from Marquette to conduct an in-depth study on the biomechanics of elite level throwing. Would something like that be possible at a conventional track meet?

The “chillness” might be inherent in the field group, but it was emphasized by the fact that this oasis for throwers all around the globe is in the middle of rural Oklahoma. There wasn’t a track, there wasn’t a mixed zone, and in lieu of any sort of a stadium, there were only a few wooden bleachers. The entrance to the site of the five best marks ever by male discus throwers is a long driveway and a mailbox with a Throw Town sticker on it. Millican Field feels like the athletes that stepped foot in its cages, rings, or runway this weekend: humble, powerful, and a perfect formula to answering everyone’s question of how to keep moving the sport of track and field field and track forward.

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What We Can Learn From GST Miami Challenger Announcements 🌴

The next stop on the Grand Slam Track schedule takes fans and athletes to the Ansin Sports Complex in Miramar, Florida, just outside of Miami. Barring injury, you can bank on all of the league’s Racers to be there. But they’ll comprise just half the fields in each event. That’s where the Challengers—athletes who drop in for an à la carte Slam—come in.

While it seems fair to assume that the strategy behind sending out Challenger invites cascades downwards from “if you’re the fastest non-Racer available, welcome aboard,” there’s likely a bit more thought and strategy to it. And with the first round of Challenger announcements for Miami officially out there, we’re able to guess at how GST hopes these athlete inclusions will make for even more compelling matchups and racing. Here are a few of our thoughts:

Timothy Cheruiyot, Bridging the Divide in the Men’s Short Distance

We learned in Kingston that Emmanuel Wanyonyi has the strength to mix it up in—at least—a tactical 1500m against the best milers on the planet. Those milers collectively and understandably aren’t global championship sharp yet. And while we can expect them to improve with every Slam, right now, they aren’t likely to go out with a Marco Arop-set pace in the 800m. Adding Cheruiyot to the mix should help close the gap between specialties. He’s not just a former World champ over 1500m and the owner of a sub-1:44 800m PB… it’s his fearlessness as a racer that is compelling. It was Cheruiyot who pulled the eventual medalists back to Jakob Ingebrigtsen in the Paris final—he will willingly go after whoever’s in the lead, of whatever race he’s in. That’s valuable in a setting like GST!

Anna Hall Knows How to Double (and Beyond) in the Women’s Long Hurdles 

Rounding the oval in pursuit of Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone is hard enough. Running two brutal races against her in one weekend? That’s just brutal. Cue: heptathlete Anna Hall, who is no stranger to grueling competition schedules. She’s no slouch over hurdles, and could sneak up on some of the 400m hurdles specialists there. But it’s her chops in the flat 400m—and her proven ability to put up high-level performances when heavily fatigued—that’ll make her an even bigger factor on her second day of racing. We’re not saying she’s going to run down McLaughlin-Levrone, but leave it to a heptathlete with notable 800m strength to at least make things interesting. GST is fortunate to have the elusive SML on board, because whenever she lines up, it’s appointment viewing. The hard part is making what can easily become two largely solo efforts into unique spectator events.

Amber Anning Might Be the Perfect Spoiler in the Women’s Long Sprints 

In one of the most exciting categories from Kingston, fans were treated to a showdown between Gabby Thomas, Marileidy Paulino, and Salwa Eid Naser. Paulino and Naser are the two best 400m specialists out there right now, but Thomas can mix it up over a full lap, too, as demonstrated in Jamaica. In Anning, this group gets yet another versatile, world-caliber star who will undoubtedly be in the hunt for a top-three placement in the 400m and should be the field’s best bet to upset Thomas in the 200m. The name of the game for GST is unexpected outcomes, and by introducing one more potential spoiler to this elite crew, we could see an outcome where one of the greatest 400m runners ever in Paulino or Eid Naser doesn’t even land in the group’s top-three. How’s that for an unexpected outcome?

More News From The Track And Field World 📰

– Down under at the Australian Championships, Jess Hull had another busy weekend, taking home double gold in the 1500m and 5000m; Gout Gout went 19.84 in the 200m (with a just barely non-legal tail wind of 2.2m/s); Paris high jump silver medalist Nicola Olyslagers cleared 2.01m to 2022 World Champ Eleanor Patterson’s 1.97m in a phenomenal duel; and Peter Bol lowered the Australian 800m record to 1:43.79.

– At the Botswana Grand Prix, South Africa’s Akani Simbine ripped a 9.90 100m into a slight headwind; hometown hero Letsile Tebogo went 20.23 to win his heat of the 200m (South African Sinesipho Dambile ran faster—20.01—in the second heat); and Motswana Oratile Nowe lowered her own national 800m record to 1:58.96.

– There’s more to Leuven, Belgium, than a fun little track meet where 1500m runners eat cute ice cream cones after. It also hosted this year’s European Running Championships, where France’s Jimmy Gressier (59:45) and Belgium’s Chloe Herbiet (1:10:43) won the half marathon; Frenchman Yann Schrub (27:37) and Italy’s Nadia Battocletti (31:10) took top honors over 10k; and the marathon was won by Italy’s Iliass Aouani (2:09:05) and Fatima Ouhaddou (2:27:14) of Spain.

– Turns out you can strip the whole pomp and circumstance around the Olympics away from Paris and you’ll still can still throw a decent little marathon. Kenya’s Bernard Biwott (2:05:25) cruised to a 52-second victory, while Ethiopian Bedatu Hirpa (2:20:45) had to outsprint her compatriot Dera Dida to secure her win.

– Geoffrey Kamworwor (2:04:33) and Jackline Cherono (2:21:15) made it a Kenyan sweep atop the podium at the always fast Rotterdam Marathon. And for a Rotterdam factoid, how about this: it’s home to Europe’s largest seaport.

– Meet organizers from the Prefontaine Classic have announced this year’s men’s Bowerman Mile headliners: Yared Nuguse, Cole Hocker, and Jakob Ingebrigtsen. (Go ahead and design your own Coachella-inspired poster accordingly.)

– Utahn wunderkind Jane Hedengren soloed a 9:34.12 2-mile at the Arcadia Invitational, shaving over seven seconds off the old high school outdoor record. The BYU-bound Hedengren also dipped well below Mary Cain’s 9:38.68, which was run indoors.

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