Give me a Wanjiru 2008 Olympics marathon. I watched that whole race waiting for the implosion that never happened.
Barcelona 1992 had a great men's race for first and second on a fairly tough course on a hot day.
Underwhelming would be something like the Atlanta 1996 men's race. Random South African guy winning.
Josiah Thugwane. Anybody know if he accomplished anything notable before the OG?
Yeah he won the Honolulu marathon in heat and humidity about 8 months prior and to those who follow things throughly this marked him out as a likely contender. He later ran 2.07(?) In London so was a bona fide world class marathoner. Doping matters aside, the very idea that the Olympic marathon gold medallist can be anything other than an extraordinary runner is just idiotic.
1400 ft+ total elevation gain with max gradient of 13.5%. Then just as much descending to chop up those quads. Seems complete opposite of all those super fast 2:01-2:04 type courses the Africans normally race on.
This smells a lot like Athens 2004 (which had less total elevation gain than this race but was the hottest marathon ever at 86 °F).
All you need now is a heat wave to spice things up and really opens the door for some underdogs to steal the show. I predict this will be the event of the games.
Wow. I knew this was a hilly ourse and looked at the map but your info tells me it is a world of difficulty more than I thought.
Instead of an underwhelming winner or overwhelming favorite, I’d like to just see a plain old whelming gold medalist.
Would it be underwhelming if the winning time is 2:12 and the top five finishers on the men’s side are within 2 min of each other? Or 2:30 in the women’s with the same late race competition? I’d rather watch the competitors fighting for position in a tactical race. That’s one thing that’s unique about the Olympics.
Tokyo was hot with mediocre times. I think it benefits Americans like it did Molly Seidel in Tokyo.
15-30k is brutal. Has almost all the elevation gain (looks like close to 1k ft of gain in 9 miles) and the downhills are steep enough to leave you wrecked for the last 10k. Going to be a fun race- especially if it’s warm anything could happen that last 5k. Great runners have blown up with far less challenges. That said, the way Lemma ran Boston, it’s hard to bet against him.
Yep, USA will go 3/6/25 in both races & then we'll get some more threads in the fall/spring when those athletes take pay days at NYC/Boston about how nobody can break 2:10/2:25 & that we'll never be competitive on the global stage.
Course looks great. Racing is more fun to watch than time trialing.
If there was a road mountain running champs this would be it. Kilian Jornet should be entered
This greatly underestimates the huge difference between Jornet's ability in the marathon and the ability of truly world-class marathoners, including many of the best Spanish marathoners, who have historically distinguished themselves in some of the most competitive unpaced, hilly, warm-weather marathons, particularly in the world athletics championships.
1400 ft+ total elevation gain with max gradient of 13.5%. Then just as much descending to chop up those quads. Seems complete opposite of all those super fast 2:01-2:04 type courses the Africans normally race on.
This smells a lot like Athens 2004 (which had less total elevation gain than this race but was the hottest marathon ever at 86 °F).
All you need now is a heat wave to spice things up and really opens the door for some underdogs to steal the show. I predict this will be the event of the games.
86 degrees for a marathon is insane, how anyone could finish the distance in that heat alone beats me. Even racing a 5K in 86 degree heat sounds like a miserable experience, but to do that over 8 times should be world class in itself.
1400 ft+ total elevation gain with max gradient of 13.5%. Then just as much descending to chop up those quads. Seems complete opposite of all those super fast 2:01-2:04 type courses the Africans normally race on.
This smells a lot like Athens 2004 (which had less total elevation gain than this race but was the hottest marathon ever at 86 °F).
All you need now is a heat wave to spice things up and really opens the door for some underdogs to steal the show. I predict this will be the event of the games.
Wow. I knew this was a hilly ourse and looked at the map but your info tells me it is a world of difficulty more than I thought.
No way, the difficulty of the course seems overrated. Look at the course profile. The 1400 feet of total gain is meaningless, much of that is just small ups and downs. There is one 400-foot hill over 3 miles in the middle of the course (less than 150 feet per mile!) followed by one 200-foot hill over 1 mile. Maybe two minutes slower overall compared to a flat course, but not "difficult" by any means. Sometimes small hills are even helpful because they allow for a break from the exact same muscles being used the exact same way for 26 miles straight.
An African will win, but neither Kenyan or Ethiopian. Look for outliers for silver of bronze. Lots of DNFs. Lots of bonking.
Victor Kiplangat of Uganda is a real threat. 2023 World champion, 2022 Commonwealth champion, 2017 World Mountain Running champion. He “only” has 59:26/2:05:09 PRs but seems well suited to this style of race.