Berlin Marathon 2024 Race Preview

The autumn season of the Abbott World Marathon Majors begins this weekend with the 50^th running of the Berlin Marathon.

With 13 world records set in Berlin, including the current women’s best and the second-quickest men’s time, runners go to Berlin to run fast. 

This year, the elite line-ups look a little different to usual. With the Olympic Marathon taking place just seven weeks ago, the world’s top marathoners are recovering from Paris or preparing to run in Chicago or New York, so this weekend in Berlin we will see the best-of-the-rest. Those runners who have stood on podiums in big city races like Amsterdam, Valencia, Dubai, Hamburg, Paris, Seville, Osaka, and now get their place on the start line in Berlin. 

It’s a chance for the younger runners to come and take their chance and win one of the ultimate prizes in our sport. Whatever happens, there will be new male and female champions in the 2024 Berlin Marathon, and two runners will win their first Marathon Major.

BERLIN MARATHON MEN’S RACE

For the first time since 2014, neither Eliud Kipchoge nor Keninesa Bekele will be on the start line. Between them, they’ve won seven of the previous eight races, with Kipchoge winning the previous two Berlin Marathons and setting a new world record of 2:01:09 at the 2022 race (since lowered by Kelvin Kiptum in Chicago).

This year’s race features 14 men who have run under 2:06, and it includes the third and fourth place finishers at last year’s Berlin Marathon: Ethiopia’s Tadese Takele (2:03:24) and Kenya’s Ronald Korir (2:04:22).

Takele, who only turned 22 in August, is a brilliant prospect having made his marathon debut in his superb 2:03 in Berlin last year. That was the fastest ever under-23 marathon. Korir, by contrast, is a relative veteran at 33-years-old and having run 17 marathons in his career.

Kenya’s Cyprian Kotut finished second in the 2023 Amsterdam Marathon in a PB of 2:04:34, having previously won marathons in Paris and Hamburg. This is his first Berlin Marathon.

Ethiopians Hailemaryam Kiros and Bazezew Asmare are both 2:04 guys, as is Kenya’s Kibiwott Kandie, the former half-marathon world record holder, who is looking to lower his best of 2:04:48, which he ran for sixth place at the 2023 Valencia Marathon. Kandie could be a runner who sets out at a very fast pace to push the field.

Will it be a fast men’s race? Or will this feel like a championship where winning means more than running 2:02? The excitement is for Takele and seeing the potential that he has, but there are a lot of men willing to push hard to become a Marathon Major champion. 

BERLIN MARATHON WOMEN’S RACE

The women’s field is dominated by the best marathoners from Ethiopia, showing the country’s incredible depth of athletes. 

Ethiopia’s Tigist Ketema starts as the favourite, having run two minutes quicker than the second-fastest in the field. Ketema stepped up from specialising in middle distances and ran 2:16:07 in her debut marathon in Dubai earlier this year, which made her the ninth-fastest female marathon runner of all time. She trains with marathon world record holder Tigist Assefa, who ran her stunning 2:11:53 in Berlin last year. 

Genzebe Dibaba (2:18:05), Yebregual Melese (2:19:36), Mestawot Fikir (2:20:45) and Azmera Gebru (2:20:48). lead the contenders. Dibaba holds, or has held, several world records over the short and middle distances, and ran her 2:18 at her debut marathon in Amsterdam in 2022, where she finished second. Yebregual Melese has won marathons in Houston, Prague and Shanghai. Fikir won this year’s Paris Marathon in her debut over 26.2 miles, finishing in 2:20:45. Gebru won this year’s Seville Marathon in a race where athletes were chasing their Olympic qualifying standards.

There are also a couple of Brits in the elite field. Calli Hauger-Thackery ran in the Paris 2024 Olympic marathon but was unable to finish, and Phily Bowden. 

With a mix of fast young runners, and more experienced marathoners, the women’s race could be very open and exciting. 

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If you want to know more about the race in general, then here’s a full guide to running the Berlin Marathon.

Photo: @SCC EVENTS 2022