Worthing's Sam Cook successfully defended his Brighton Marathon crown on Sunday 12 April, holding off a strong domestic field to cross the line first in 2:25:04 on the seafront. Brighton Phoenix's Amy Harris took the women's race for a popular local win in 2:49:38, capping a record-breaking weekend on the south coast that drew more than 20,000 finishers across the marathon, 10K and trail marathon events combined. For an event that has been steadily rebuilt since joining the London Marathon Events stable, it was the cleanest operational weekend in recent memory.
Cook's successful defence was not a procession. Ryan Deakin stayed on his shoulder through 30K before fading to second in 2:29:48, with Aaron Hudson finishing third in 2:31:59. The Sussex winds were a persistent factor once the course turned west along the A259, but Cook's back-to-back finishing strength — honed through a winter of marathon-pace work in the South Downs — carried him home with a comfortable margin. It is a second consecutive Brighton title for the 30-year-old, and cements him as the most consistent British domestic marathoner on the spring calendar outside the London Marathon's elite fields.
Harris's 2:49:38 was, on paper, a more modest time, but the context adds to it. The Brighton Phoenix athlete balanced the win against her local training environment and against a stiff headwind through the middle miles along Madeira Drive. Flaminia Gold finished second in 2:51:42, with a third-place runner rounding out the podium inside 2:55. For several years the women's domestic field at Brighton had been thin compared with other UK marathons, so both the depth and the local flavour of the top three will be quietly welcomed by organisers.
The wider weekend picture was one of scale. More than 14,000 runners completed the marathon itself on Sunday, while the 10K on Saturday saw Kieran Barnes (31:33) and Josie Wren Golder (36:59) take the men's and women's titles respectively. The inaugural Brighton Trail Marathon, staged on the Downs above the city, was won by James Baker of Chichester, with Alice Denning the first woman home in 3:39:35. Weekend organisers confirmed the weekend's 20,000-plus finisher count was a new high for the event.
Brighton sits awkwardly in the UK marathon calendar, squeezed between Manchester two weeks earlier and London two weeks later, and the race has not always attracted the headline elite entries that it could. This year's edition, however, looks like a useful template: a fast domestic men's race, a meaningful local women's win, a growing 10K, and a trail marathon that already felt like a permanent fixture by the end of the weekend. The 2027 date was confirmed for Sunday 11 April, with entries opening later in the summer.