On Sunday, five days from now, Kenya's Sabastian Sawe will step onto Blackheath in Red Start Zone One and try to become the first man since Eliud Kipchoge to successfully defend a TCS London Marathon title. That is the headline sentence, but it is not really what the race is about. The more interesting question — and the one that explains why his own coach now uses the word "history" rather than "title" when he talks about race day — is whether Sawe can arrive at The Mall with a fourth consecutive marathon victory, an undefeated professional marathon record, and a time that confirms him as the outright fastest marathoner in the world at a moment when the event is deeper than it has ever been.
Sawe's résumé over the distance is strikingly tidy. He debuted at Valencia in December 2024 and ran 2:02:05, which at the time was the fastest marathon debut ever. He won London on his Majors debut in April 2025 in 2:02:27, still the second-fastest time in the race's history. Last September he won Berlin in his third start. Three marathons, three wins, no performance slower than 2:02:27 — no other active male marathoner can claim a start-to-current run as clean. Paula Radcliffe, writing in her column this week, called the record "the most efficient opening act in marathon history". It is hard to disagree: Mosinet Geremew, Kelvin Kiptum and even Kipchoge all tasted defeat within their first five races.
The context around Sunday's race matters almost as much as the start list. Boston Monday produced a course record for John Korir of 2:01:52, the fastest legal marathon ever run on American soil and only 16 seconds off Kiptum's world record. The gauntlet has been thrown down directly on the other side of the Atlantic. Sawe's entire winter has been organised around the possibility that the world record could be broken in London — his training group in Kapsabet has logged more than 120 miles a week of specific tempo work at between 2:52 and 2:55 per kilometre, which is world-record pace for a slightly-slower-than-flat course. Sawe himself said in a Monday telephone briefing that "a course record may be required" to win on Sunday; the translation that his federation provided does not quite convey how matter-of-fact he was about it.
The opposition is what makes those numbers so consequential. Uganda's Jacob Kiplimo, the world half-marathon record holder, returns for a second London Marathon after his extraordinary 2:03:37 debut here last year. Ethiopia's Tamirat Tola is the Olympic marathon champion and a former New York winner who has been absent from the Majors since a 2024 injury. Yomif Kejelcha brings sub-27 track speed and an improving marathon CV. Kenya's Amos Kipruto, the 2022 London champion, is the class of a chasing pack that also includes three-time Boston winner Evans Chebet. The men's race has five men with sub-2:03 PBs and another four under 2:04; only the 2024 Tokyo field has ever been built this deep at the sharp end.
A win on Sunday would give Sawe three Major titles in 15 months, a feat only Eliud Kipchoge, Haile Gebrselassie and Patrick Makau have matched in the modern era. A win in under 2:02 would make him the fastest Major winner not named Kiptum or Korir. A win with a course record would make him arguably the most complete marathoner on the planet at 28 years old. If any of those things happens the Sunday evening press conference at The Tower will look very different from last year's low-key exchange: this time, the quiet man from Kapsabet will be the dominant storyline of the entire running season, not a runner who just happens to have won the London Marathon. The race starts at 08:50 British time on Sunday 26 April.