Charles Hicks ran the second fastest marathon in the history of Boston by any athlete claiming American citizenship on Monday, clocking 2 hours, 4 minutes and 35 seconds for seventh place at the 130th edition of the world's oldest annual 26.2-mile race. It was only the second marathon of the 24-year-old's career, following his 2:09:59 debut in New York in November, and the performance has almost immediately reopened the long-running argument over how a runner who grew up in west London ended up chasing course records for the United States rather than Great Britain. Hicks himself spoke about the progression quietly at the finish, telling reporters that the race 'went by in a blur' and that he 'just wanted to sit with 2:04:35 for a moment before thinking about what it means'.
The time is remarkable for more than one reason. Only Zouhair Talbi's 2:03:15, recorded earlier in the same race, is faster by a runner under the US flag on American soil. Boston's point-to-point, net-downhill course means neither mark will be ratified by World Athletics for record purposes, but for contextual comparison Hicks's 2:04:35 is inside Ryan Hall's long-standing Boston American best of 2:04:58 and improves on the 2:05:11 Mo Farah set in Chicago in 2018 — the mark that has stood as the British national record for nearly eight years. Had Hicks not transferred allegiance to the United States in the spring of 2025, Farah's record would no longer exist.
The bare genealogy makes Hicks's eligibility straightforward. Born in London, raised in Fulham until the family moved to Florida when he was 12, he attended Bolles School in Jacksonville before running four NCAA seasons at Stanford, where he won the 2022 men's cross country individual title. He raced for Great Britain at European Cross-Country level as a junior and represented the senior team at the 2023 European 10,000m Cup, but US residency and college career made the switch administratively simple once he declared after graduation. UK Athletics received formal notification in April 2025 and World Athletics confirmed the transfer of allegiance in July, making him eligible for the American team from the 2026 World Championships cycle onward.
Tactically on Monday, Hicks ran a clean race from the back of the lead pack. He was in 12th at halfway (1:02:30), moved up steadily as early movers paid for an aggressive start, and was timed at 2:03 pace from 30 kilometres onward, only losing ground fractionally over the final mile as the heat built on Boylston. His final 10 kilometres of 29:22 was the fifth-fastest closing split in the elite field and, along with Talbi's run five places ahead, made for the strongest American men's Boston result since Ryan Hall, Meb Keflezighi and Jason Hartmann were in form together more than a decade ago. Clayton Young's 2:05:41 in 11th completed a trio of sub-2:06 finishes by US-affiliated runners for the first time in the race's 130-year history.
For Hicks the immediate question is whether Boston represents a ceiling or a platform. His coach, Stanford's Chris Miltenberg, indicated at the finish that the plan had been 'a committed progression race, not a personal best pursuit', and that the real target remains a place on the United States team for the 2027 World Championships in Beijing. With Conner Mantz recovering from a sacral stress fracture and the American team yet to settle on its fastest three, Hicks's Boston time effectively puts him into pole position for the Cherry Blossom selection trials in December. For the British marathon scene, meanwhile, the conversation becomes more bittersweet: the fastest marathon ever run by a British-born athlete now exists, but it belongs to someone else's national team.