The BMW Berlin Marathon is six days away, and the race that opens the autumn Major season does so without the man who was supposed to define it. Sebastian Sawe, the world record holder and defending champion, withdrew through injury, removing at a stroke the single most compelling reason to watch. Around 60,000 athletes from some 160 nations will still line up on 27 September across the marathon, wheelchair, handbike and inline skating events, but the elite men's race has had to be rebuilt around the people who remained.
Gabriel Geay is the most obvious beneficiary. The Tanzanian record holder ran 2:03:00 for second in Valencia in 2022 and was runner-up at Boston in 2023, and at 29 he has the range to handle a race that may now be run on feel rather than on a pacing schedule. Guye Adola is the other name with genuine Berlin history: he ran 2:03:46 on his marathon debut here in 2017, finishing behind Eliud Kipchoge, and has never quite escaped the expectation that debut created.
The sentimental draw is Kenenisa Bekele, who returns to Berlin at 44 in his first race of the year and his first since dropping out of the New York City Marathon in November. He won here twice, running 2:03:03 in 2016 and 2:01:41 in 2019, missing the world record by seconds on both occasions. Nobody sensible expects him to contend for the win, but Berlin is the course on which he has run his best marathons, and a strong performance is not out of the question.
On the women's side the field is the stronger of the two. Tigst Assefa, who holds the women-only world record and took Olympic silver in Paris and world silver in 2025, leads a group that includes Amane Beriso and defending champion Rosemary Wanjiru. Assefa's history with this course is the reason the record question keeps being asked: Berlin is where she first announced herself as a marathon runner, and it remains the flattest, fastest stage available to her in September. Esther Pfeiffer carries the domestic interest.
Berlin has produced more men's world records than any other course, and the reason is unglamorous — it is flat, it turns rarely, and late September in northern Germany usually delivers cool, still air. Those conditions make the race vulnerable to a single variable. Without a pacemaker-led time trial at the front of the men's field, Sunday may turn into something Berlin rarely stages: a marathon decided by racing rather than by the clock. For spectators, that is not the worse outcome.