Sabastian Sawe will not defend his Berlin Marathon title on 27 September. The world record holder announced his withdrawal on Instagram last week, telling followers he was “forced to withdraw from the Berlin Marathon due to injury” without specifying its nature or severity. Race organisers confirmed the news but offered no further detail, and there is no indication yet of when the 31-year-old Kenyan expects to return to training.
The withdrawal removes the sport's biggest name from the biggest date on the autumn road calendar. Berlin was due to be Sawe's first competitive outing since his historic run at the London Marathon in April, where he became the first man to break two hours in a record-eligible race with 1:59:30. The flat, fast Berlin course — scene of eight men's world records over the past five decades — had been widely expected to host his next assault on the barrier.
Even without its headliner, the men's race remains formidably deep. The elite fields name 67 runners in total, with 25 men holding personal bests under 2:08 and six under 2:05, while an Olympic 10,000m champion sits only eighth on the start list by time. Race organisers will now look to that depth, rather than a single star, to produce the fast racing Berlin's audience has come to expect.
The women's field may yet provide the weekend's biggest story. Tigst Assefa heads the list at 2:11:53, the time she ran on this course in 2023 when it stood as the world record and which survives as the course record. She is joined by fellow Ethiopian Amane Beriso and defending champion Rosemary Wanjiru of Kenya, with eight further women under 2:20 — a field organisers have described as among the strongest ever assembled in the German capital.
For Sawe, the calculation now turns to recovery and timing. An autumn on the sidelines would leave a spring 2027 marathon as the natural target, though his management has made no commitment. Around 60,000 runners from roughly 160 countries will still take to the streets of Berlin on 27 September; the man they had hoped to chase home will be watching, for now, from Kenya.