Andreas Almgren of Sweden won the New York City Marathon on Sunday, November 1, in 2:06:01, winning the first marathon of his career in Central Park. The 31-year-old pulled away from Italy’s Yemaneberhan Crippa in the final mile to win by 13 seconds, on a morning when Kenya’s Sheila Chepkirui reclaimed the women’s title in 2:24:36.
FINAL: Andreas Almgren 2:06:01, Yemaneberhan Crippa 2:06:14, Kamohelo Mofolo 2:06:26. Almgren’s time was the third fastest in the 50-year history of the five-borough race, and he became the first runner to win the New York City Marathon on his debut since Ethiopia’s Gebre Gebremariam won the 2010 race. He is the first Swede ever to win in New York, the first Swedish runner to win any major marathon, and the first European-born men’s winner since Italy’s Giacomo Leone in 1996.
Andreas Almgren’s New York City Marathon Debut Breaks A 30-Year Wait
Almgren arrived in New York with no marathon on his record and a career built at shorter distances, and he raced like a man who had been waiting for the distance rather than fearing it. The lead pack refused to break for most of the morning: after 17 miles the top 17 men were separated by only three seconds, and a pack of 15 was still together at 35 kilometres. Almgren stayed at the front of it, watching the race develop on the hilliest course on the World Marathon Majors circuit.
“This is my first marathon. I didn’t know how I was supposed to feel,” Almgren said after the finish. “I just tried to stay up at front and see what happened and see how the race developed. I didn’t think it was going to be that quick of a finish, but I didn’t really know anything about that. One of the reasons I choose to race New York is that you don’t care about the time but just get as good a position as possible.”
The numbers behind the finish explain the upset. Almgren reached halfway in 1:04:04 and covered the second half in 1:01:57, a negative split of more than two minutes on a course that punishes runners in the closing hills. He ran the final 2.195 kilometres in 6:01, using the closing speed of a former 800 metres runner to break Crippa with about 800 metres left, then had enough left to wave to the Central Park crowd on the home stretch. Behind the podium, defending champion Benson Kipruto of Kenya finished fourth in 2:06:27, one second behind Mofolo, the Lesotho runner who turned 21 on race day and cut nearly two minutes off his personal best to take third. Australia’s Haftu Strintzos was fifth in 2:06:35, and American Zouhair Talbi finished sixth in 2:06:43, the fastest time ever run by a U.S. athlete in this event. Six men broke 2:07 in all.
A Year That Ran From The Track To Central Park
The debut win caps a season that had already redrawn Almgren’s career. He won bronze in the 10,000 metres at the 2025 World Championships in Tokyo, then took the European 10,000 metres title in Birmingham in August. In September he won the half marathon at the World Athletics Road Running Championships in Copenhagen in 58:06, a European record, becoming the first non-African winner of that title in 30 years. He also holds the European records at 5,000 metres and on the road at 10 kilometres, a range that stretches back to his start as an 800 metres junior, when he won bronze at the 2014 World Under-20 Championships.
New York was a deliberate choice, made a year ago. Almgren came to the 2025 race as a spectator to support a friend, and the atmosphere settled the question of where his debut would happen. “Before I was there, I hadn’t completely decided to run myself,” he said before this year’s race. “But then I saw the race and everything around me and felt how fired up the whole city was. I think there are around two million people who usually come out to watch along the course. That atmosphere was part of what made me decide, ‘Okay, now I want to run here.'” The New York course, run without pacemakers over five bridges and a long climb up Fifth Avenue, suited a racer rather than a time triallist, and he prepared for it on hilly roads during a training block in Flagstaff, Arizona.
Sunday also opened the qualifying period for the marathon at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, and the top five men’s finishers in New York earned qualifying places for those Games. Almgren, who still works as a data scientist consultant alongside his running and has been coached by Urban Aruhn since 2012, now holds a win in the last World Marathon Major of 2026, with the Valencia Marathon on December 6 the remaining fast race on the calendar.
Chepkirui Reclaims The Women’s Crown As McClain Stuns Obiri
The women’s race delivered its own finish-line reversal. Chepkirui, the 2024 champion, pulled away from defending champion Hellen Obiri in the final 150 metres to win her second New York title in three years in 2:24:36. “The last mile was really tricky,” Chepkirui said. “I had to be patient because I knew Hellen was really strong, so I had to really push up to the finish line.”
What Chepkirui could not see was American Jessica McClain closing on both Kenyans over the final 800 metres. McClain passed Obiri, the two-time champion who set the course record in 2025, in the final strides to take second in 2:24:42, six seconds behind Chepkirui and one second ahead of Obiri. It was the first podium finish by a U.S. woman in New York since Shalane Flanagan finished third in 2018. “It was a really fun, magical day out there,” McClain said. “Top five was top of mind, then podium. I was just like, stick with it. And then all of a sudden Hellen was coming back to me, so I don’t really know what happened, but I couldn’t be happier right now.” Kenya’s Edna Kiplagat, the 2010 champion, finished fourth at age 46.
The wheelchair races went to Switzerland. Marcel Hug won the men’s race for the eighth time, passing American Daniel Romanchuk in the final 100 metres to win by just over a second. Catherine Debrunner won the women’s wheelchair race in 1:40:02, the second-fastest time in race history, with two-time defending champion Susannah Scaroni third, three months after giving birth to her first child.
It was the 50th running of the race through all five boroughs of New York, a route first used in 1976, when just over 2,000 runners started and only 88 of them were women. About 60,000 runners from more than 140 countries started on Sunday, nearly half of them women, and the course carried one change: at Mile 20 in the Bronx, runners took a slightly different route for the first time in 15 years, cutting the number of turns in the borough from seven to five. On the anniversary running, the race produced a debut champion in the men’s race, a reclaimed crown in the women’s race, and one of the deepest fields in its history. Almgren, who had never raced the distance before Sunday morning, now owns the third-fastest winning time New York has ever seen.
