Tigist Ketema and Milkesa Mengesha won the 50th Berlin Marathon, giving Ethiopia a sweep of the women’s and men’s titles of any annual World Marathon Major for the first time in three years.
Ketema, 26, won the women’s race in 2:16:42, giving her two wins in three career marathons, all in 2024. She distanced runner-up Mestawot Fikir by 2:06 as Ethiopia took the top four spots.
In January, Ketema ran the world’s fastest women’s debut marathon in 2:16:07 in Dubai. She is the ninth-fastest female marathoner in history and had the fastest personal best of the Berlin field.
Ketema began her career on the track, winning the 2016 World Junior Championships 800m bronze medal. She now trains with Tigst Assefa, who won the 2023 Berlin Marathon in a world record 2:11:53, and Tamirat Tola, who won the Paris Olympic men’s marathon for Ethiopia’s lone gold medal of the Games.
BERLIN MARATHON: Results
Mengesha, 24, won the men’s race in 2:03:17, prevailing by five seconds over Kenyan Cybrian Kotut in the closest Berlin Marathon in 12 years.
Mengesha’s biggest title before this was the 2019 World Junior cross-country championship. He also placed 10th in the Tokyo Olympic 10,000m on the track.
“He had the chance to get in the Chicago Marathon (on Oct. 13),” a translator for Mengesha said in a finish area interview. “He was supposed to run there, but he knew the (Berlin) course is flat, the weather is nice, so he was really into Berlin, and at the end, he did it.”
He debuted at the marathon in 2022, won the Daegu Marathon in South Korea in 2023, placed sixth in the 2023 World Championships marathon and went into Berlin with a personal best of 2:05:29.
It’s the first time Ethiopian runners swept the men’s and women’s titles of any annual World Marathon Major since Berlin in 2021. There are six annual major marathons — Tokyo, London, Boston, Berlin, Chicago and New York City.
The Berlin field included neither Kenyan Eliud Kipchoge nor Ethiopian Kenenisa Bekele for the first time since 2014. Both ran in the Olympic marathon on Aug. 10.
The next major marathon is the Chicago Marathon.
The Chicago women’s field includes Kenyans Ruth Chepngetich (two-time Chicago champion, fourth-fastest woman in history) and Joyciline Jepkosgei (New York City, London champion) and the second- and third-fastest Americans in history, Keira D’Amato and Betsy Saina. Kenyan Amos Kipruto, the 2022 London winner, headlines the men’s field.
