Boston, 20 April 2026. Korir breaks the course record, Lokedi defends her title, first men’s and women’s double defence in 31 years
Kenya’s John Korir ran the world’s oldest annual marathon in 2:01:52 and broke the course record. Sharon Lokedi won the women’s race in 2:18:51, the first time a men’s and women’s champion have both defended their Boston titles in the same year in 31 years.
Korir: a record that had been waiting since 2011
The previous course record, 2:03:02, belonged to Geoffrey Mutai since 2011. Korir cut 70 seconds off it, pushing the Boston Marathon into territory that had until now felt reserved for flat, tightly controlled races like Berlin or Chicago.
Boston is known as a point-to-point course with a net downhill profile (Hopkinton to Boston, about 137 metres of net descent), but the short, sharp climbs in the second half, including the famous Heartbreak Hill at kilometre 33, are supposed to cancel out that advantage. Korir proved that is not true for everyone.
It was Korir’s second straight Boston win. At the finish he said simply, “I didn’t know I could run that fast.” Modest words, but the time speaks for him.
Lokedi: a second win and the return of Kenyan dominance
Sharon Lokedi won in 2:18:51. She defended last year’s title, when she set the women’s course record at 2:17:22, adding a second Boston win to her record.
A men’s and women’s champion both defending their titles in the same year last happened at Boston in 1995, when Uta Pippig and Cosmas Ndeti did it. That is a 31 year gap. Now it is Korir and Lokedi.
Wheelchair racing: Hug completes a ninth win, Rainbow-Cooper takes a second title
In the men’s wheelchair race, Switzerland’s Marcel Hug won for the ninth time, an effective monopoly on the title by now. In the women’s race, Britain’s Eden Rainbow-Cooper won her second Boston title, having taken her first in 2024. Susannah Scaroni won in 2025, so Rainbow-Cooper’s two titles are not consecutive, though that takes nothing away from them.
What it means for the marathon season
For runners building toward the Majors this year (London on 26 April, then Chicago and New York in the autumn), Boston 2026 raises the bar for marathons without a flat, straightforward profile. Until now, course records under 2:02 belonged only to Berlin, Chicago, London and Valencia. Boston has just joined that club, on a course that most people assumed would trade a fast time for tradition.
For triathletes targeting a strong run leg off the bike at IRONMAN 70.3 or full distance, including Kona, the message is simple: elite pace no longer has a ceiling. If your goal is a sub-3 marathon leg after the bike, you need to find seconds in things that used to feel secondary: carbon shoes, run cadence, tapering and fuelling. Without that work, you will keep running “somewhere around 3:15” indefinitely.
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