Eliud Kipchoge and Sifan Hassan will race the Tokyo Marathon on March 3, five months before each could run for history at the Paris Olympics.
Kipchoge, the two-time reigning Olympic men’s marathon gold medalist, previously won the Tokyo Marathon in 2022 in a course record time of 2:02:40.
In a bid to win all six annual World Marathon Majors, Kipchoge chose Boston for his spring marathon this past year and placed sixth. He has yet to win the Boston Marathon and yet to race the New York City Marathon.
Kipchoge won the other four annual majors a combined 11 times (Berlin, Chicago, London, Tokyo) and held the world record of 2:01:09 before countryman Kelvin Kiptum lowered it to 2:00:35 in Chicago on Oct. 8.
Choosing Tokyo in March over the other major spring marathons (Boston and London in April) gives the 39-year-old Kenyan more time to prepare for his bid to become the first person to win three Olympic marathons and the oldest person to win any Olympic running event. Kenya has yet to name its three-man Olympic marathon team.
Kiptum’s next marathon is in Rotterdam, Netherlands, on April 14.
The men’s marathon at the Paris Games is Aug. 10.
Hassan, a 30-year-old Dutchwoman, will contest her third career marathon in Tokyo. She won in her 26.2-mile debut in London last April 23, then won Chicago on Oct. 8 in the second-fastest women’s time in history (2:13:44).
In between, she ran the 1500m, 5000m and 10,000m at August’s world championships, earning one silver medal medal and one bronze medal.
At the Tokyo Olympics, Hassan became the first woman to win medals in the 1500m (bronze), 5000m (gold) and 10,000m (gold) at the same Games.
She has not announced which events she plans to contest at the Paris Olympics.
It is possible she goes for the 5000m (Aug. 5 final), 10,000m (Aug. 9) and marathon (Aug. 11). No woman has raced all of those distances at one Olympics, according to Bill Mallon of Olympedia.org. The lone man to earn a medal in all three at one Olympics was Emil Zátopek, the Czech who won all three in an eight-day stretch at the 1952 Helsinki Games.
