Brigid Kosgei won the 45th Great North Run on Sunday in 1:06:15, and Zouhair Talbi took the men's race in 59:47, on a Tyneside morning whose most anticipated storyline ended inside the opening miles. Eilish McColgan, around whom most of the British interest in the women's race had gathered, withdrew early with a foot injury, and the contest Kosgei had been expected to have never materialised.
Kosgei pressed from the gun and ran most of the 13.1 miles from Newcastle to South Shields alone, finishing 2:04 clear of her compatriot Sheila Chepkirui, the defending champion, who came home in 1:08:19. Ethiopia's Melknat Wudu was third in 1:09:37 and Japan's Honami Maeda fourth in 1:09:43. Kosgei's winning time was well outside the 1:04:28 course record she set herself, which is what running unopposed tends to produce.
Amy-Eloise Neale was the leading British woman in fifth in 1:10:27, ahead of the United States' Natosha Rogers in sixth. Annabel Gummow, Nancy Scott, Amelia Quirk and Rebecca Weston filled four of the next five places, giving the host nation five of the top ten — a stronger collective showing than the absence of its headline name would suggest, even if none of them was close to the front.
The men's race was the tighter of the two. Talbi, running for the United States, held off Kenya's Alex Mutiso by 14 seconds, the defending champion finishing in 1:00:01 and so missing the hour by a single second. Japan's Yohei Ikeda was third in 1:00:40 and Casey Clinger fourth in 1:01:36, with Kosei Matsunami, Shouya Yonei and Clayton Young next, a top seven drawn entirely from the United States and Japan.
Marc Scott led the British men in eighth in 1:02:10, with Joe Hudson ninth in 1:02:22 and Andrew Butchart eleventh in 1:02:58. The 58:56 course record that had looked reachable in mild conditions was never seriously threatened once the lead group settled, and Talbi's winning margin was built in the closing miles rather than by any early break. Attention on the roads now moves to Copenhagen, where the World Athletics Road Running Championships open on 19 September.