We said on Friday that we'd give our predictions on Saturday after the press conferences. Well it's still Saturday outside of the East coast so here you go. I don't actually think the stars will finish in this order exactly but we rank them in order of most likely to win to least likely.
1) Geoffrey Mutai - How do you not pick a guy that this year has run 2:03:02 and won the Kenyan XC Trials by 44-seconds?
Answer: You don't unless he's hurt. He said he's been healthy so he has to be considered the favorite.
Honestly, the 44-spread in Kenya might be the most impressive thing he's done all year.
2) Emmanuel Mutai - Normally the London champ is the favorite but people need to remember that before his win in London, Mutai was very good at finishing 2nd as he was 2nd in his previous 3 races.
3) Mathew Kisorio - He's almost certainly going to be a big star eventually so we don't want to look bad and no have him in our top 3. If he's the new Wanjiru, then we want to be able to say we were fans before he got big.
4) Tsegaye Kebede - HE was our favorite for London. He's got 500,000 reasons to try to win in New York.
5) Gebremariam - He sounded confident in the press conference and he's the defending champ. But an insidersaid to us at the LRC/Puma bash last night that he didn't think Gebremariam was going to do well. When we told this unnamed person, Gebremariam said his training had been going well our sourc replied, "So he's trained well since he dropped out with an ankle problem at Worlds in August. But how was the training before August?"
Top American - I say Bobby Curtis. Wejo says I'm crazy and Meb.