By Amy Tennery
NEW YORK (Reuters) – A field packed with 2024 Olympians will descend on the year’s final marathon major in New York on Sunday, with surprisingly few citing fatigue to opt out after the Paris Games.
The defending men’s champion Tamirat Tola of Ethiopia and Kenyan women’s champion Hellen Obiri, who took gold and bronze in Paris respectively, will be among 29 Paris Olympians and Paralympians at the starting line on Sunday.
“What I anticipated – and we didn’t really have – was people who signed on to run the race and then said, ‘You know what, I’m too beat up and I’m not coming’,” Sam Grotewold, general manager of professional athletes for New York Road Runners.
“We didn’t have that attrition like we would typically expect, especially in an Olympic year.”
Each year it is Grotewold’s job to compete with other marathons in autumn to attract the best-of-the-best in distance running, a task that becomes harder in an Olympic year when many top competitors would rather put their legs on ice.
His job got a little easier in 2021, when Kenyan Peres Jepchirchir became the first to win the famed five-borough race and Olympic gold in the same year, inspiring Tola as he attempts the same.
“We lost two people who competed in Paris who were expected to start on Sunday,” Grotewold told Reuters. “I expected maybe triple that and we just didn’t get it.”
Advances in fueling, nutrition and training have helped, he said, along with the rise of the “super shoes” that have led to faster times across the board.
“Shoe technology helps a ton there because you finish those races and you’re just not as beat up as you used to be and then you can start training again much more quickly than you were previously,” he said.
Tola is joined by Paris runner-up Bashir Abdi of Belgium, who is seeking his first major title after a trio of podium finishes, and the fastest in the field Evans Chebet, who won two years ago and triumphed for Kenya in Boston twice.
Obiri will battle against compatriots Sharon Lokedi, who won the five-borough race two years ago and finished second on the podium in Boston earlier this year, and 2018 London winner Vivian Cheruiyot.
(Reporting by Amy Tennery in New York; Editing by Edwina Gibbs)
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