The 28th Flying Pig Marathon delivered a homegrown sweep on Sunday as 22-year-old Jack Randall, fresh out of the University of Cincinnati, took the men's marathon in 2:33:46, while Anderson High School cross-country coach Kerry Lee won the women's race in 2:53:55 on her seventh attempt at the distance. Both winners ran much of the day in front of crowds banked along the bridges that link Cincinnati to Northern Kentucky, with Randall already clear by the time the field turned south across the Taylor-Southgate.
Race weekend total participation reached 37,244 across the marathon, half marathon, four-person relay, 5K, 10K, kids' marathon and pet walk. More than 18,400 of those finished the marathon, half marathon or relay on Sunday morning alone, with runners on hand from all 50 states and 20 countries. The Pig has now welcomed more than 1.4 million participants across its 28 editions, a number the city's tourism office cited on Sunday as the largest cumulative draw of any single Cincinnati sporting event.
Randall's win continues a recent run of collegiate-aged Americans winning the Flying Pig title, and his 2:33:46 came on a course whose Eden Park climb in the eighth mile remains one of the few sustained climbs on the spring marathon circuit. Race director Iris Simpson Bush told reporters at the finish that Randall had broken the elite group on the descent into Mariemont rather than waiting for the flatter return into downtown, a tactical choice she described as the kind of "let's see what happens" racing the Pig has historically encouraged.
For Lee, the women's title arrived on what she called her last serious attempt at the distance. The high-school coach had finished within the top 10 in three of her previous six tries but had never broken away in the final five miles. On Sunday she ran the second half quicker than the first and held off Cincinnati local Maggie Dunn by 41 seconds at the line. "I'm here every year because the kids do the marathon relay," she said in the finish chute. "It just felt different this morning."
The Pig completes a packed first weekend of May for American road racing alongside the Pittsburgh Marathon, the Hoag OC Marathon and Saturday's Kentucky Derby Festival miniMarathon. Cincinnati's race remains an unusually deep mid-tier marathon by participation standards, sitting comfortably inside the United States' top 15 on Sunday's headcount alone. With Randall and Lee both committed to defending in 2027, organisers are already pointing to the 30th edition in 2028 as a potential 40,000-participant target.