Kenyan Olympic 1500m finalist Brian Komen to make 2025 debut at Rabat Diamond League on May 25

Kenya’s Brian Komen was one of the surprise packages of the 2024 track season. After running 3:33.84 for 1500 meters at age 24 in 2023, the first year for which results are available on his World Athletics profile, Komen improved to 3:28.80 in Monaco last year — making him the 6th-fastest man of 2024 — and won his first Diamond League meet in Doha. Komen advanced to the Olympic 1500 final in Paris but finished last, later telling media he got the flu during the preliminary rounds.

When LetsRun.com realized he hadn’t race at all this year and wasn’t on the Prefontaine Classic start lists, we reached out to his agent Lee-Roy Newton for an update. Newton told us Komen did not race during the indoor season as he was rehabbing a hamstring injury that bothered him towards the end of last season but will make his 2025 debut in the 1500 meters at the Rabat Diamond League on May 25. After Rabat, Komen plans on running the 1500 meters at the Rome Diamond League on June 6. Newton also said Komen has changed sponsors, from Nike to Asics.

“He ran the Olympics with quite a severe niggle in his hamstring,” said Newton, who began representing Komen at the end of last year. “We took off some time and he came to South Africa to rehabilitate that. He’s now firing on all cylinders.”

Komen, 26, who trains in Iten under coach Eric Kogo and alongside 2023 Worlds 10,000m silver medalist Daniel Ebenyo, has risen from obscurity to one of the world’s top 1500-meter runners over the last two years. Newton said that while Komen ran in high school, he took a break from running when he went to university. Once Komen resumed training, his talent emerged quickly.

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