2025 Tokyo Marathon Men’s Preview

2025 may well be looked back upon as one of the greatest years in men’s distance running. Already we’ve witnessed six world records by four men, and while it’s unlikely that the opening weekend of March will give us our seventh, the men’s race at the 2025 Tokyo Marathon will definitely hold your attention in other ways.

Joshua Cheptegei

If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.

5000m and 10,000m world record holder and double Olympic Champion Joshua Cheptegei has officially retired from the track and will now focus his full attention on the marathon. It seems the marathon will accept nothing less from the Ugandan, who debuted in Valencia in 2023 when he still had one eye on the track and blew up spectacularly, running an eight-minute positive split and finishing 37th.

Only two other (former) 5000m and 10,000m world record holders have run a marathon in the last 50 years: Haile Gebrselassie and Kenenisa Bekele. Gebrselassie is the former world record holder and history’s first man to break 2:04, and Bekele is the third-fastest marathoner of all time and is still racing competitively at the age of 42 (he will line up for the London Marathon in April, having finished second in the English capital last year). It’s hard, then, to overstate the expectations that the running world has of Cheptegei, and while his unfortunate debut in Valencia has certainly tempered some of the hype, the fact remains that the greatest long-distance track runner of this generation is giving our sport’s flagship event his full focus and dedication, which can only be an exciting thing.

The men’s field at the 2025 Tokyo Marathon is brimming with marathon veterans, so it’s probably too much to ask for a win from Cheptegei. But if the Ugandan can be competitive for most of the race, run a somewhat even split, and take a healthy chunk off his personal best (2:08:59 was his time in Valencia), then I think we can officially open the marathon chapter of the 28-year-old’s life and look forward to the next decade of road racing. 

Joshua Cheptegei during the 2023 Valencia Marathon

Benson Kipruto

Defending champion Benson Kipruto will take to his 18th marathon start line when he returns to the streets of Tokyo on March 2nd.

Kipruto is coming off the back of a very successful 2024, during which he won this race in a new personal best and course record of 2:02:16 and made the podium in Paris in his first-ever championship marathon. Since his maiden World Marathon Major medal in 2021 he’s never finished off a marathon podium, making him perhaps the world’s most consistent road runner of the past few years. With Eliud Kipchoge’s looming retirement, Kipruto is a worthy successor to the Kenyan marathon throne, and a successful title defence in Tokyo against this field would go a long way in earning him that crown.

Benson Kipruto wins the 2024 Tokyo Marathon

Deresa Geleta

Running is hardly a sport in which you can fake it until you make it, but Deresa Geleta might be the closest thing to it.

Before 2024, Geleta had never come close to breaking 2:05, had taken nine attempts to crack 2:10, and had never run at a global championship or in a World Marathon Major. Then, at a Spanish race in February last year, he clocked a new lifetime best of 2:03:27 (it’s worth noting that the point-to-point course had an extremely favourable tailwind that saw 16 of the top 17 run personal bests, with an average improvement of almost two minutes!) Nevertheless, the Ethiopian Athletics Federation sent him to Paris, and he seized that opportunity with both hands. He managed a very impressive fifth-place finish at the Olympics, and four months later he jumped to seventh on the all-time list when he finished runner-up in Valencia, crossing the line in 2:02:38 and rounding out one of the most astonishing breakout years I’ve ever seen.

Now, you may be wondering: how does someone go from 2:07:30 in 2022, to 2:05:51 in 2023, to 2:02:38 in 2024? I’ll let you draw your own conclusions on that one. Whatever the explanation, the 28-year-old will be looking to carry the momentum of last year into his 2025 season, so expect a strong race from the Ethiopian this Sunday.

Deresa Geleta during the Paris Olympic marathon

Vincent Kipkemboi Ngetich

Both the men’s and women’s races feature an elite Kenyan who studied and worked in Japan before turning pro. On the women’s side, it’s Rosemary Wanjiru, and on the men’s side, it’s Vincent Kipkemboi Ngetich.

Ngetich has not had a long professional career so there isn’t much to write about, but a brief resume is no reason to disregard him this weekend. The Kenyan made his marathon debut at the 2023 Berlin Marathon, where he finished second behind Kipchoge in what is still his lifetime best of 2:03:13. He was third in this race last year and fourth in Chicago, and he opened his 2025 account with a 1:00:00 second-place finish at a half marathon in Spain. My best guess is that Ngetich will be one of the men making up the numbers in the front pack until the pointy end of the race, but don’t be surprised if he manages to hold on for a medal.

Dawit Wolde

Some people love to sit down at the start of a year and plan their season, build their training around key races, and have a good think about what they want to achieve in the future. Dawit Wolde is no such person.

For the first 10 years of his career, Wolde was a through-and-through 1500m runner. Then, somewhat randomly, he signed up for a marathon in 2014. His finish time of 2:10:42 was good enough to earn him a silver medal, but a DNF in October and a fourth-place finish in January the following year were clearly discouraging enough to send him back to the track. He returned to the middle-distance events in 2015 and made the Ethiopian Olympic team for 1500m in 2016, but after failing to make the final in Rio, he once again started drifting towards the longer events. This pattern of racing on a whim – of bouncing between events that last three minutes and those that last more than two hours – has continued throughout his career, and while it’s certainly an unconventional approach, it’s not been totally devoid of successes. Wolde does have a personal best of 2:03:48 from Valencia in 2023 (and yes, he also ran 1500m races that year), but it’s worth noting that his run in Valencia was sandwiched between a 17th-place finish in Chicago and a DNF in London. Good marathons seem to be the exception for Wolde, not the rule.

We may never know why he refuses to focus on one discipline. We may never know why he decided to run a random marathon in China last month despite already being announced in the Tokyo field. But what we do know is that it would be foolish to rule out a 2:03 man with the closing speed of a middle-distance runner.

On the right day, Wolde is just as capable of winning this race as anyone else.

Dawit Wolde wins the 2020 CPC Half Marathon

Birhanu Legese

A sprinter as a junior, Birhanu Legese has slowly worked his way up through the distances over his career, consistently finding more success the further he goes. Making his marathon debut in 2018, the Ethiopian once stood at third on the all-time rankings behind only Eliud Kipchoge and Kenenisa Bekele. He’s since fallen to ninth, but his 2:02:48 personal best from 2019 makes him a title contender on any marathon start line.

Legese is only 30 years old, so he has plenty of time to recapture the form he enjoyed only a few years ago. He was the back-to-back Tokyo Marathon champion in 2019 and 2020, but he’s not broken 2:04 since that year and has registered the only two DNFs of his career in the last three years.

The 2025 Tokyo Marathon will be his first World Marathon Major since 2022 (assuming he makes it to the finish line), and while his most recent race is worthy of a mention – a 2:05:21 in Valencia last December – his 11th-place finish in that event leaves something to be desired in terms of race tactics.

Legese’s only two World Marathon Major victories have come on the streets of Tokyo, so it makes sense why he’s chosen the Japanese capital as a springboard into what I’m sure he hopes will be a return to form; now it’s just a question of whether he can pull it off.

Birhanu Legese wins the 2020 Tokyo Marathon

To find out how you can watch the 2025 Tokyo Marathon, click here.

To read my preview for the women’s race, click here.