With three days to go until Sunday's TCS London Marathon, the women's elite field has been fundamentally reshaped by the late withdrawals of Sifan Hassan and Peres Jepchirchir, leaving Kenya's Joyciline Jepkosgei as the most credible pre-race favourite on a start list that, twelve weeks ago, looked like the deepest in the race's history. Hassan, the 2023 London champion and reigning Olympic marathon gold medallist, pulled out in late March with an Achilles problem sustained on a treadmill, while Jepchirchir — the 2025 world champion — followed a fortnight later with a stress fracture. The twin losses have stripped the race of two of its four fastest entrants and recalibrated every betting market in the sport.
Jepkosgei arrives in London off the back of a 2:14:00 personal best at the Valencia Marathon in December, a run that made her the second-fastest woman in the field and, by some distance, the fastest woman on the course in a recent Abbott World Marathon Major. The 32-year-old has finished on the London podium three times and won the race outright in 2021, and her coach Gabriele Rosa confirmed on Tuesday that her build-up had gone "without a single missed session". Speaking at the elite press conference at the Tower Hotel, Jepkosgei said she had come to London "to try for the course record and the world record, in that order," with Paula Radcliffe's long-standing 2:15:25 women's-only world record now firmly in the conversation given the flat forecast.
Defending champion Tigst Assefa of Ethiopia remains the fastest woman ever to run a marathon with her 2:11:53 mixed-race mark from Berlin 2023, and her 2:15:50 London winning time twelve months ago was the second-fastest women's-only marathon in history. Assefa's preparation has been less conspicuously sharpened than Jepkosgei's — she raced no half marathon this spring and declined to confirm her workout paces at Wednesday's media round-table — but those inside the Ethiopian camp have told reporters her long runs at altitude in Addis Ababa have been markedly faster than a year ago. A repeat of last year's tactical, patient ride on the pacers' shoulders would put her in position to counter anything Jepkosgei throws at her from Mile 20.
The third pillar of the redrawn contest is Hellen Obiri, the two-time Boston and two-time New York City Marathon champion making her London debut at 36. Obiri has never raced a marathon with a cumulative elevation loss as friendly as London's, and her 2:21:38 personal best — set in Boston's punishing profile last year — translates on paper to a low-2:18 on a genuinely fast course. Against Jepkosgei and Assefa she is the least proven over the fastest distances, but she is also the runner whose finishing kick has delivered the most major-marathon victories of anyone on the start line. Behind the top three, Britain's Eilish McColgan leads a strong home contingent and is widely expected to threaten Paula Radcliffe's 2:15:25 British record.
Sunday's forecast is benign: an 11°C start temperature in Blackheath at 9:05 a.m. BST, rising to a mid-teens high, with a light northerly tailwind through the Isle of Dogs and the Embankment. The race organisers will set a male pace team through halfway in 66:45, a split that would put the leaders on 2:13:30 pace and well inside Assefa's 2:16:23 women's-only course record. Whether any of Jepkosgei, Assefa or Obiri can hang on to that is Sunday's question — but after a brutal six weeks of withdrawals, the race now at least has a clear three-way narrative, and a favourite running at the sharpest form of her life.