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With many cancelled marathons rescheduling to the Fall of 2021 – particularly the London and Boston Marathons – and the Olympics pushed from 2020 to 2021, the quantity of recent marathons was at a record and there was, frankly, a dearth of fresh runners to participate in the 2021 New York City Marathon. In fact, the two favorites to win the 2021 New York City Marathon had both participated in marathons in the recent three months… Also strange was that for the first time in recent history, the defending champion – albeit from two years back, 2019, the last race – was not returning to defend his title.

With the second fastest marathon finish in all of history, Kenenisa Bekele (2:01:41 at the 2019 Berlin Marathon) was the obvious favorite. But Bekele had started and not finished the 2021 Berlin Marathon less than two months prior so his freshness could be questioned. Further, Bekele’s expertise lay with running flat/fast courses with a pacemaker setting the cadence for the runners – a very different scenario than would take place in New York. With the second best personal record at the marathon, Abdi Nageeye was arguably the second best candidate as favorite to win. Nageeye was the silver medalist at the Tokyo Olympics just three months prior.

As the 2016 New York City Marathon champion – at the time only 20 years old and youngest champion ever at New York – Ghirmay Ghebreslassie should be a contender. Ghebreslassie, further, set his personal best in early 2021 (at a special elite-only race held to allow qualification for the Olympics), so we should hope he should compete well. However, despite being a past champion and third-fastest in the field, the New York Road Runners chose not to include a biography page for Ghebreslassie in their media guide… Are the NYRR not expecting much from Ghebreslassie and/or do they know something that we don’t?

Rounding out the field are the second and third finishers from the 2019 New York City Marathon: Albert Korir and Girma Bekele Gebre; and two Americans who could sneak into the top 5 or even podium: Noah Droddy and Jared Ward.

Ultimately, the story will be a return to running after the Coronavirus cancellations. Whatver we see on race day, we look forward to some strong running.