As She Returns to the London Marathon in 2025, Sifan Hassan Says She Wants to Keep Improving
Hassan headlines the 2025 TCS London Marathon field and shared her thoughts on why it's okay to lose, whether she is the distance GOAT, and Ruth Chepngetich's world record
By Jonathan GaultWhen Sifan Hassan tripled at the Olympics in 2021, it took her almost a year to recover.
Shortly after winning double gold in the 1500 and 10,000 meters at the 2019 World Championships in Doha, Hassan began contemplating a 1500/5,000/10,000 triple at the Tokyo Olympics. The idea scared her — which, to Hassan, is usually proof that it is worth pursuing — but also became a source of great stress, especially when the IOC announced in March 2020 that the Olympics would be delayed until 2021 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. How would her body handle six races in nine days? What if chasing three golds meant that she wound up winning none?
“I didn’t know if it was possible because no other people [had done it],” Hassan says, speaking on a call with reporters last week. “…It was very hard. I had two years or three years of stress.”
While Hassan’s Tokyo triple — gold in the 5,000 and 10,000, bronze in the 1500 — required an almost superhuman physical effort, the mental strain proved tougher to recover from. She tried to return to training multiple times in the ensuing months, only to quit due to lack of motivation. It took until May 2022 — nine months after Tokyo — for a training plan to stick, and when she returned for that year’s World Championships in Eugene, she was not at her best, finishing 4th in the 10,000 and 6th in the 5,000.
So after Hassan completed a second straight Olympic triple in Paris last summer — bronze in the 5,000 and 10,000, gold in the marathon — she resolved to do things differently this time. Hassan took a full four months off of training. She spent a month of her break in the Netherlands visiting family and friends, reminiscing about the old days when they would go shopping together or plan sleepovers. The days before running took over Hassan’s life.
“I want to show my friends and my family, no I was just busy for my work, but you guys are important to me,” Hassan says. “Some people thought I forgot them or something – because I became famous, they think they don’t exist to me. And I thought, You guys [were] always in my heart. I was just busy.”
The leadup to Paris was hardly smooth. In 2021, Hassan knew she was heading to the Olympics in the shape of her life. In 2024, Hassan had no idea where her fitness was at. She ran poorly in her final pre-Olympic race — a 4:04.83, 5th-place finish in the 1500 in Hengelo on July 7 — and performance testing after the race with the Dutch federation revealed symptoms of overtraining. She took a week off in attempt to recover, but by the time she arrived in Paris, Hassan says she was already looking ahead to LA 2028.
“When I was in Paris, I thought my Olympic year is over,” Hassan says. “…I will just do my best, I want to see, and then focus on the next Olympics.”
It quickly became apparent Hassan was still plenty fit. But she says that running a marathon on the toughest course in Olympic history just 35 hours after earning bronze in the 10,000m final made the Paris Olympics an even tougher physical experience than Tokyo. Hassan’s body was still feeling the effects when she returned to training last month — “everything hurts,” Hassan says with a smile — but the long break left her mentally refreshed in a way she had not been after Tokyo.
That is why the 32-year-old Hassan feels ready to put a race on the calendar: the 2025 TCS London Marathon.
London is where Hassan made her marathon debut in 2023, and her victory in that race — after dropping nearly 30 seconds behind the leaders at halfway to stretch out a quad injury — remains one of the most iconic in London’s 45-year history. Hassan calls it “a miracle.” And it planted the seed for her Olympic heroics the following year.
“After London, I finish, and that’s when suddenly my brain was thinking about Paris – I’m going to do [the] marathon there,” Hassan says.
On April 27, Hassan will go for title #2 in London alongside fellow Olympic champion Tamirat Tola of Ethiopia, who headlines the men’s elite field.
World records, GOATs, and…four majors in one year?
Often in elite running, there is a tendency for athletes to become more selective with their racing schedule the higher they climb in the sport. Think of Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone or late-career Usain Bolt. There is an aura of invincibility to protect; any defeat is damaging to the brand.
Not with Hassan. She has compiled a resume that puts her firmly in the conversation for greatest female distance runner in history yet she carries no hint of an ego. Hassan attempts these ludicrous triples knowing that it could all go horribly wrong, but she accepts the risks and does them anyway. Last year, she was beaten by 15 seconds in the Prefontaine Classic 5,000 in May and came away pleased with the effort because she was in the midst of a heavy training block. The losses, she says, keep her humble.
“I’m a little bit out of culture,” Hassan says. “In running, people just focus on one thing, being the best, and they don’t want to go down and be not the best anymore. But I’ll go down everywhere. I’ll go to the track. So I’ll win, but not always. I lose also. When I lose, people think, oh, she’s not good anymore. I also think I’m not good anymore.
“I don’t want to think I’m the best, I’m the GOAT, because I have so much curiosity in my head. I have so many goals in my head. I want to see what can I do. If I think I’m the GOAT, I don’t think I’m going to improve myself.”
What goals are floating around in Hassan’s head right now? She says she still wants to run personal bests on the track (her 5,000 pb stands at 14:13; her 10,000 pb is 29:06). And she says she wants to run four major marathons in one year — not this year, but perhaps in 2026 or 2027.
That is classic Hassan. Since the World Marathon Major era began in 2006, no woman has ever won more than two majors in a year (though Kenya’s Peres Jepchirchir did win the Olympics, New York, and Boston in the span of eight months across 2021-22). Hassan wants to try four just to see how she would handle it.
And of course there is Ruth Chepngetich‘s 2:09:56 world record, set in Chicago last year. When Hassan first heard the time, it took her a while to comprehend what Chepngetich had actually done. To Hassan, 2:09:56 was just a series of digits, not a possible marathon time for a woman in the year 2024.
“My brain didn’t really check [it] mentally,” Hassan says. “…She wasn’t in Paris with us. [The last time] she ran with me [at 2023 Chicago], she ran 2:15. Sometimes if an athlete is close, 2:11 or something, you suspect the athlete [could improve that much]. It didn’t come to my head that Ruth was going to run that time…No one thought a female would run that time – maybe in the future, but [not this soon].”
In that way Hassan, whose personal best of 2:13:44 ranks third all-time, was just like the rest of the world. Was Chepngetich’s breakthrough due to better shoes? Better fueling? Better training? Better drugs? Hassan does not know, but she is glad that it happened.
“Now when I look back, it is amazing, incredible,” Hassan says. “It’s fantastic what she did. I’m really happy that she did it. Because I don’t care how [Ruth] did it, it just showed me it is possible.”
Hassan says she thinks she could break the record one day, but it might take her two years of hard training to get into 2:09 shape.
“It is possible, but it is a matter of time,” Hassan says. “It just takes long training.”
First up for Hassan, though, is London. Beyond that, who knows? If you cracked open her head, you would find all sorts of crazy ideas. Yet even in that area, Hassan believes she can improve.
“I’m not the GOAT yet of my imagination,” Hassan says. “Not in my head.”
Talk about Sifan Hassan and the 2025 London Marathon on our world-famous messageboard: MB: Hassan, who will run London, on Chepngetich’s 2:09:56 WR: “I don’t care how [Ruth] did it, it just showed me it is possible.”
LRC’s coverage of Hassan through the years
2019 Worlds Sifan Hassan Completes Historic 10,000/1,500 Double in Style With a 3:51.95!!
2021 Olympics Sifan Hassan Completes Triple With Gold in 10,000m
2023 London LEGENDARY: Sifan Hassan Gets Dropped Early, Storms Back To Win 2023 London Marathon
2024 Olympics Sifan Hassan Completes Olympic Triple by Outsprinting Tigst Assefa for Marathon Gold
LRC Coach Tim Rowberry Explains How Sifan Hassan Pulled Off Her 2024 Olympic Triple