Tamirat Tola Breaks Olympic Record To Win The Men’s Olympic Marathon As Eliud Kipchoge Fails To Finish

On one of the toughest marathon courses, and competing against 80 of the world’s best marathoners, Ethiopia’s Tamirat Tola put in a dominant run to win the Paris 2024 Olympic Marathon in an incredible new Olympic record of 2:06:26. 

Belgium’s Bashir Abdi won silver, with Kenya’s Benson Kipruto taking bronze. GB’s Emile Cairess ran a gutsy race to finish in fourth place. 

Given the warm weather, which rose with the challenging course through the morning, no one would have predicted such a fast finish time, especially after a cautious and steady first half of the race, which took a large pack of runners through 21.1km in around 65 minutes. 

As the brutal climbs continued, Tola was so strong on the uphills that no one dared to follow, then he was so smooth on the downhills that no one could catch up. 

Behind him, the race had already been drawn out, with some of the pre-race favourites struggling and slowing down, as the course, conditions and the pace became too much for most runners, including the great Kenyan runner Eliud Kipchoge.

But GB’s Emile Cairess wasn’t one of those runners who struggled, and he had a sensational run on the streets of Paris, which saw him in second place at 30km, before being overtaken by Abdi, Kipruto and Ethiopia’s Galeta.

As Tola ran towards his gold medal, Adbi pushed forward of the pack and Galeta dropped back, eventually being passed by Cairess, with the Brit finishing in 2:07:29.

Unfortunately there was no romantic finish in Paris for Olympic greats Eliud Kipchoge and Ethiopia’s Kenenisa Bekele.

In Kipchoge’s fifth Games, he was aiming for the third straight gold in the Olympic marathon to add to a 5000m bronze in 2004 and 5000m silver in 2008, but the Kenyan was visibly struggling before halfway, holding his side, and dropped out of the race after around 30km. It’s the first time Kipchoge has failed to complete a marathon. 

Bekele was in his fourth Games and has three Olympic gold medals (10,000m 2004 and 2008, 5000m 2008, and 5000m silver in 2004), but he struggled from early on in his first Olympic marathon (at the age of 42!), and ended up 39th, six minutes behind the winner. 

GB’s Phil Sesemann was 46th in 2:13:08 and Mahamad Mahamad finished 57th in 2:15:19.

But all the attention should be on Tola’s special performance in Paris.

This is Tola’s second Olympic medal, having won 10,000m bronze in Rio 2016, before moving up to the marathon, where he was the 2022 World Champion and 2023 New York City Marathon champion, running a course record, but this will be his greatest career win – and he only found out he was running two weeks ago, called up as an injury replacement for countryman Sisay Lemma.

For Tamirat Tola to break the Olympic record on that course is one of the great victories in Olympic marathon history. 

Coming up…

Coming up later today we’ve got six finals on the track in Paris, where these are the last races of the Olympic Games apart from tomorrow’s women’s marathon (you can see a preview of the marathon here). Here are the start times (all in BST).

6.25pm: Men’s 800m – final
6.45pm: Women’s 100m hurdles – final
7.00pm: Men’s 5000m – final
7.25pm: Women’s 1500m – final
8.12pm: Men’s 4x400m relay – final
8.22pm: Women’s 4x400m relay – final

And listen to our daily podcast to hear all the latest behind the scenes action from Paris!

Photo: Getty Images / Michael Steele