When Ethiopia’s Wendemu Berehanu Tsegu crossed the line in Old Town Square on Saturday in 2:05:51 to win the 2026 Vodafone Prague Marathon, the result reframed a season that had begun with a hard reality check. It was only his third career marathon. He had finished second in Dubai in 2025 in 2:05 territory, looking like an emerging headline name. He had then finished a disappointing seventh in Dubai in January 2026, two minutes adrift of his own best, in a race he and his team had openly identified as a build-up benchmark for a fast spring.
What changed in the four months between Dubai and Prague is the kind of detail that does not show up in race-day storytelling but matters more than the headline split. Tsegu’s management, NN Running Team affiliates working out of Sululta and Yaya Village in Ethiopia, restructured the back end of his block around quality long runs at marathon-pace effort rather than volume, and pushed the final tune-up to a fast 25K race rather than another half-marathon. The intent was specifically to teach the body to hold pace deep into a race that has historically gone wrong for him after 30km.
The Prague result executed that plan only in part. Tsegu went out hard with the leading group through 5km in 14:35 pace and was poised to threaten Eliud Kipchoge’s long-standing course record before midday temperatures climbed and the lead pack fragmented from 28km. The win came in 2:05:51, well off course-record pace but still a 24-second improvement on his Dubai 2025 personal best, and roughly two minutes back from Kenya’s Felix Kipkoech in second (2:07:45) and Ethiopia’s Andualem Belay in third (2:07:59). It was a controlled, mature finish in difficult late-spring heat.
For the wider Ethiopian marathon depth chart, Tsegu’s Prague win arrives at a moment when the men’s ranks are being reshuffled. Tamirat Tola is moving steadily back from injury, Kenenisa Bekele has made clear that his focus is on a final autumn major rather than the spring circuit, and Tsegu fits the profile that Ethiopian Athletics Federation selectors have been favouring for the Tokyo World Championships in September: young, durable, and with course-management experience on a major. Whether that translates into a championship vest is for the federation to decide; what Prague has done is force the question.
Tsegu, 25, was measured in his post-race remarks, thanking pacers and crediting Sululta’s training partners while acknowledging that the warm conditions at Prague were a rougher test than the typical European spring. His next marathon has not been confirmed but Prague organisers RunCzech and his management have hinted at an autumn major, with Berlin and Valencia both mentioned as candidates. For an athlete whose career was, three months ago, being talked about in terms of regression, he has bought himself a much longer runway with one decisive afternoon in Czechia.