Americans Fiona O’Keeffe and Emily Sisson are ready to rock the NYC Marathon – Can they get on the podium?

The 2025 TCS New  York City Marathon is Sunday and the women’s field is full of international talent. Olympic champ Sifan Hassan of the Netherlands headlines but the field also includes the winners of the last three New Yorks in Sharon Lokedi (2022), Hellen Obiri (2023) and Sheila Chepkirui (2024). You can read our full race preview here but below we break down the Americans chances (this section also appears at the end of the full race preview).

This year’s New York women’s field is also STACKED with US talent. American record holder Emily Sisson and Olympic Trials champion Fiona O’Keeffe headline the US attack as they both will run their first marathon since the Paris Olympics. 2021 Olympic bronze medalist Molly Seidel also will race her final marathon before moving to the ultramarathon world. And don’t ignore Worlds 4th placer Susanna Sullivan and last year’s top American Sara Vaughn.

No American woman has finished on the podium in New York since Shalane Flanagan was 3rd in 2018. Top 3 will be a tall order in 2025 given how good the international field is, but here are the US women trying to do just that.

What will Fiona O’Keeffe and Emily Sisson do in their return to the 26.2 distance? Both have had fantastic buildups

Twenty-one months ago, Fiona O’Keeffe and Emily Sisson finished 1-2 at the Olympic Marathon Trials in Orlando. Sisson went on to finish 22nd at the Olympics in Paris, while O’Keeffe dropped out after a mile with what was later revealed to be a femoral stress reaction. Neither has raced a marathon since. So it is a pretty big deal that the Olympic Trials champion and American record holder are both returning to the 26.2-mile distance in New York.

O’Keeffe’s coach Alistair Cragg is bullish on her chances. She has been in Park City for this buildup training with last year’s NYC third placer Vivian Cheruiyot, the 2016 Olympic 5000 champ who also in this year’s NYC field, and Cragg said O’Keeffe’s workouts have been at a “higher level” than they were going into her debut victory at the Trials last year.

O’Keeffe took almost two months off after the Olympics to heal and has spent the last year trying to strengthen weak spots to prevent future injuries. She ran an impressive 67:46 in her first race back at the NYC Half in March off of very limited training and wanted to run a spring marathon. But her support team — Cragg, his wife Amy (2016 Olympic Trials champ), and agent Tom Ratcliffe — felt a more gradual approach would benefit her long-term. They wanted to ensure that when she tackled her next marathon, she was 100% ready.

Alistair Cragg told LetsRun he has been impressed wth how O’Keeffe has handled the 2025 season and how she has been willing to take things slowly.

“We thought it would be a good time to reset, rebuild, put down some foundations that would help her have a longer career,” Cragg sad. “All of those things were put in place…I think she’s grown up a lot, she’s matured a lot over the last year.”

O’Keeffe ran 68:35 in her prep race at the Copenhagen Half — a solid time, but one that won’t turn many heads. But the clock doesn’t tell the whole story. In New York, O’Keeffe will be facing some of the best marathoners in the world — something she has never done before in a marathon since she dropped out of the Olympics so early. In Copenhagen, O’Keeffe went out on 63-minute pace through the first couple miles and while she could not hold that pace, Cragg came away impressed with how she held on while hurting without totally cratering.

“We just said close your eyes and swing,” Cragg said. “Our reasoning: Amy and I thought she got away with murder in Orlando — she never really felt the beast of the marathon. We knew those ladies [in Copenhagen] were going to go pretty hard – and probably too hard for her. But we wanted her to deal with a lot of the back-end, four to five, maybe six to seven miles of hell. And she did.”

Cragg acknowledged that the women’s field in New York is “insane” but if New York plays out the way it usually does, he thinks O’Keeffe will be able to hang on to the leaders for quite a while.

Kevin Morris photo

“I think Fiona will be able to run with them until at least 32-35k,” Cragg said.

As for Sisson, her coach Ray Treacy told LetsRun that she had a “fantastic” buildup until recently, when she got sick last week and had to miss a workout. Sisson is a rhythm runner, so New York isn’t necessarily the best course for her, but Treacy believes it suits her a lot better than the 2020 Olympic Trials course in Atlanta (where Sisson DNF’d) as the climbing is not as constant. Treacy also pointed out that Molly Huddle‘s best marathons both came in New York, and Huddle is a similar runner to Sisson.

Sisson is one of America’s most talented marathoners, but she has struggled to recapture the form that made her a formidable force on the roads in 2022 and 2023. Is this a permanent decline, or can she start to turn things around with a strong run in New York? She enters the race with some nice momentum after a 31:05 win at the Boston 10K for Women on October 11.

Molly Seidel, 31 years old, 2:23:07 pb

We know what Seidel can do at her best — Olympic bronze and a NYC American course record of 2:24:42 in 2021. But she has only finished one marathon in the last four years, which has featured injuries, mental health struggles, and a relapse of her eating disorder. Seidel, who no longer has a shoe sponsor, has turned to ultrarunning, which excites her more than marathons, and those events will be her focus beginning next year, as she explained in this article by Training Peaks. Seidel is downplaying expectations ahead of NYC, but it’s still worth monitoring how she does in her first marathon since 2023 Chicago.

Susanna Sullivan, 35 years old, 2:21:56 pb

Sullivan has been putting up the best marathon results of her life over the last two years, running a 2:21 pb in Chicago last year and finishing 4th at this year’s Worlds in Tokyo after a bold front-running effort. Her turnaround is even tighter than Hassan’s (seven weeks), so it might be a stretch to see her contend with the top Americans. But you never know in New York…

Sara Vaughn, 39 years old, 2:23:24 pb

On a day when some of the bigger names struggled, it was Vaughn — a 39-year-old mother of four who made Worlds in the 1500 in 2017 — who was the top American in NYC last year, finishing 6th in 2:26:56. She was only 20th in Boston in April, but her coach Alistair Cragg said Vaughn has been training better ahead of NYC this year than she was in 2024. “She has smashed workouts, feels great,” Cragg said.

Amanda Vestri, 26 years old, debut

Vestri, who is sponsored by Brooks and trains under Pete Rea with ZAP Endurance, is hoping to send the group out with a bang as it is wrapping up at the end of 2025. Vestri ran well on the track last year — she was 5th in the Olympic Trials 10,000 — and has impressed since moving to the roads, running 68:15 in her debut half in December 2024 and improving to 67:35 in Houston in January (she was also 3rd at the US Half champs in March). Most recently, she ran 53:14 to finish 4th at the Medtronic TC 10-Miler on October 5.

Who do you think will be the top American? Vote below and then talk about the race on our world-famous messageboad: Official 2025 NYC Marathon Pre-Race discussion – Who you got? .

Full Elite NYC Field

NR = National Record