Run Ottawa released its 2026 Tamarack Ottawa International Marathon elite field on Wednesday, with Canadian distance standouts Rory Linkletter and Natasha Wodak headlining one of the deepest start lists the World Athletics Elite Label race has assembled in its 50-year history. The marathon, scheduled for Sunday 24 May from a 7:00 a.m. start outside Ottawa City Hall, also released its Canadian 10K Championships start list in tandem.
Linkletter, who has anchored Canada's marathon depth since his Olympic debut, lines up against a strong international men's field that includes Lee Wesselius, the 2:13:52 marathoner who won the Canadian title in Ottawa in 2023 and went on to lead the Canadian charge at last year's Copenhagen Marathon. The men's elite field has been built around championship pacers targeting a sub-2:09 win and a sub-2:11 Canadian time, with prize money of 24,000 Canadian dollars on offer to each winner and payouts cascading down to eighth.
The women's race is led by Wodak, the Canadian record holder over 10,000m, with Run Ottawa confirming that 11 Ethiopian women have entered the race. Three of the Ethiopians, Meseret Belete, Rahma Tusa and Yebrgual Melese, hold sub-2:20 personal bests, and Belete brings the fastest time of the field with her 2:18:21 winning run from the 2023 Amsterdam Marathon. Race director John Halvorsen said the women's race had been built deliberately to push the long-standing Canadian All-Comers' record.
Ottawa Race Weekend continues to scale up its supporting programme in 2026, with weekend entries across the marathon, half marathon, 10K, 5K, 2K and kids' marathon now exceeding 35,000 participants. The 10K, doubling as the Canadian 10K Championships, has also released its own elite field, with weekend organisers confirming that course-record bonus structures will apply across the marathon, half marathon and 10K.
Ottawa is the second of three World Athletics Elite Label road races on the North American calendar this spring, sandwiched between the Pittsburgh Marathon and the Vancouver Marathon. Run Ottawa said the elite field had been finalised earlier than in previous years to line up with new World Athletics qualification windows for the 2026 Glasgow Commonwealth Games and the 2027 World Athletics Road Running Championships, both of which are expected to draw on Ottawa's 24 May times for selection.