On Monday, the 2023 Boston Marathon saw defending champion Evans Chebet win the men’s race for the second year in a row, finishing in 2 hours, 5 minutes, 54 seconds. Chebet surged to the front at Heartbreak Hill, leaving the much-anticipated debut of world record holder Eliud Kipchoge in the dust. Kipchoge finished sixth, just his third loss ever in a major marathon to go with 12 victories. Chebet is the first back-to-back winner since Robert Kipkoech Cheruiyot won three in a row from 2006-08.
Hellen Obiri, a two-time Olympic silver medalist in the 5,000 meters, won the women’s race in 2:21:38, completing a Kenyan sweep. Amane Beriso of Ethiopia was second, 12 seconds back, followed seven seconds later by Israeli Lonah Salpeter.
The race also included a nonbinary division for the first time, with 27 athletes registered.
The marathon, which featured a field of 30,000 runners, marked 10 years since the finish line bombing that killed three people and wounded hundreds more. The race also included 264 members of the One Fund community – those injured by the attack, their friends and family, and charities associated with them. The anniversary was marked in a ceremony on Saturday.
The men’s wheelchair race was won by Marcel Hug of Switzerland, who set a course record time and won his sixth victory in Boston. American Susannah Scaroni won her first Boston title in the women’s wheelchair race despite having to stop early to tighten a wheel that began to wobble on the bumpy pavement.
“In a marathon anything can happen,” Obiri said of the men’s race. “It was a strong field, and everybody was there to race.”
For Kipchoge, who has won two Olympic gold medals and four of the six major marathons, the Boston Marathon remains the only one he has competed in and failed to win. He has never run the New York marathon, but he did break two hours in an exhibition in a Vienna park.
