Five days out from the BMW Berlin Marathon, the race that will decide the weekend is the women's. Sabastian Sawe's withdrawal removed the single fastest name from the men's entry list and, with it, the most obvious route to a headline time. What remains at the front of the women's field is a world record holder in Tigst Assefa and a defending champion in Rosemary Wanjiru, and a supporting cast deep enough that neither can treat Sunday as a procession. Eight women in the elite entry have run inside 2:20.
Assefa's relationship with Berlin is the reason her name sits at the top of every preview. The course is flat, largely sheltered and has produced more fast marathons than any other on the circuit, and Assefa's own breakthrough came on it. That history is the argument for a record attempt; the argument against it is the calendar. A world record bid in late September requires a summer of uninterrupted work and a start-line temperature that Berlin does not guarantee. Organisers will not confirm pacing targets until closer to the day, and the honest position five days out is that the plan is still conditional on the forecast.
Wanjiru arrives with a different problem to solve. A defending champion in Berlin is rarely the fastest entrant and almost always the best-briefed one, and her 2025 win was built on judgement rather than a decisive early move. If Assefa commits to record pace from the gun, Wanjiru's race becomes a question of how much of that she is willing to follow through halfway. If the pace is conservative, the advantage swings towards the athlete who has already won a sprint out of this course's closing kilometres. Germany's Esther Pfeiffer leads the domestic interest behind them.
The men's race has been rebuilt around the withdrawal rather than diminished by it. Gabriel Geay stands second on the entry list at 2:03:00 and Guye Adola, the 2021 winner here, fourth at 2:03:46, with Shura Kitata fifth at 2:03:59. Twenty-two of the 36 men on the elite list have run 2:06:57 or faster, and an Olympic 10,000m champion sits as low as eighth. Kenenisa Bekele, at 44, makes his first appearance of the year. In the absence of a clear favourite, that depth is likelier to produce a tactical race than a fast one.
Around the elite races, Berlin remains the largest event on the German running calendar. Organisers SCC EVENTS expect well over 56,000 athletes from more than 160 nations across the weekend of 26 and 27 September, with the inline skating race and the shorter supporting events on Saturday and the marathon on Sunday morning. For most of that field the record talk is background noise, but it is the reason the city's streets will be lined by the time the lead women reach the Brandenburg Gate.