Four days from the Rimi Riga Marathon's 17 May race day, the men's elite half marathon field has come together as the strongest line-up the Latvian capital has hosted. Tanzania's Gabriel Geay and Kenya's James Kipkogei headline an invited group of nine athletes who all sit under 60 minutes for the distance, with a further eight under 60:30. Organisers, who confirmed a record 40,000 entries across distances earlier in the week, have built the men's half deliberately to chase a course record after Sharon Lokedi's women's race took the marquee billing in last week's headlines. The men's race goes off at 09:08 local time on Sunday, six minutes after the women's elite gun.
Geay's profile in particular has shifted in the past 18 months. The 28-year-old Tanzanian national record holder over the marathon turned to the half in early 2026 after a controlled return from a sustained Achilles issue that took most of the 2025 autumn marathon campaign out of his legs. His season opener at the Lisbon Half in March produced a 59:42 finish for fourth place; in Riga he sits at the front of the entry list as the second-fastest athlete on personal best, behind only Kipkogei's 58:53. The Kenyan-Latvian Athletics Federation invitation programme has subsidised flights and accommodation for both athletes, and confirmed that pacing through 15 km will be set at 2:48-2:50 per kilometre, a 59:00-59:30 projection.
The Riga half marathon course has a reputation it has not yet quite earned. It is fast on paper -- two laps around the Old Town and the right bank of the Daugava, almost entirely flat, with paved boulevards and a single tight S-bend at 12 km -- but a coastal cross-wind has scuppered each of the past three editions and the all-time record sits at 59:31, set in 2022. The forecast for Sunday is calmer than recent years, with a 5-7 mph north-easterly that, if it holds, would mean a tailwind on the Daugava embankment section and a head-on stretch on the return through Vecriga. Race director Aigars Nords told Latvian Radio on Monday that he expected the record to fall "if Geay and Kipkogei work together early".
The depth behind the top two is unusually generous for Riga. Ethiopia's Mengistu Nebsi has run 59:14 in cooler conditions in Valencia and arrives on the back of a Ras Al Khaimah top-eight finish. Kenya's Kibet Kipchirchir, the 2025 Riga marathon winner, is taking the half this year and could feature if the front runners go conservative. Uganda's Joseph Kibe and Eritrea's Goitom Kifle round out a six-deep front group; behind that group, an invited Latvian pair of Janis Girgensons and Rolands Rezgalis chases the 60-minute Latvian national record set in 2019.
For the race weekend as a whole, the Riga press conference on Friday will feature Lokedi, Geay and Kipkogei alongside the men's full marathon favourites Gerald Geay and Bonaventure Kiplagat. Friday and Saturday host the 1 mile, 6 km, 10 km and the Kids' Day fun runs. The marathon and half-marathon races run together on Sunday morning, with the wheelchair start at 08:55 and the open marathon at 09:00. Television coverage is on Latvian TV3 and on the Rimi Riga Marathon's own YouTube channel, with English commentary provided by the World Athletics broadcast feed.