This past Sunday, the largest marathon in world history took place along the banks of the Thames. A whopping 56,640 runners completed the 45th London Marathon, surpassing last year’s New York City total by around 1,000 finishers.

Odds are good you don’t particularly care to read about 56,628 or so of those runners. But what makes London special, especially over the past few years, is that those dozen names make up most, if not all, of the world’s top marathoners. It’s not unreasonable to look at the quality of the fields and conclude that the winner of London—more so than the Olympics, Boston, or any other major race—is the best marathoner in the world of any given year.

Recent editions of the London Marathon have made headlines with the incredibly stacked women’s fields organizers bring to the UK, with the top nine finisher’s in 2024’s race all in the top-20 all-time, including the past, then-present, and future world record holders.

But this year, it was the men’s race that felt like an “Avengers assemble” moment of greatness. Just look at the top six finishers:

1. Sabastian Sawe, World HM champ, now 2-for-2 in wins and sub-2:03 marathons.

2. Jacob Kiplimo, two-time World XC champ, made his marathon debut in 2:03:37.

3. Alexander Mutiso Manyao, 2024 London champ, running away from Kenenisa Bekele.

4. Abdi Nageeye, reigning NYC champ and Olympic silver medalist in 2021.

5. Tamirat Tola, 2022 World champ, 2023 NYC champ, 2024 Olympic champ.

6. Eliud Kipchoge, GOAT.

That’s a nearly complete list of the best marathoners in the world right now, and all of them ran at least pretty well in London. The two most obvious names missing from this bunch are Boston champ John Korir and last year’s Tokyo champ/Olympic bronze medalist Benson Kipruto.

2024 saw seven different men win the seven different majors (six WMMs plus the Olympics), so it was difficult to determine who the best marathoner in the world was last year. Korir made a strong claim to that title two weeks ago, following up his win in Chicago with another in Boston, but now Sabastian Sawe has issued an actually, I’m the best right now statement of his own.

The 30-year-old Kenyan had never run a marathon before last December, when he became the second fastest debutant in history (behind only Kelvin Kiptum) with a 2:02:05 victory in Valencia.

“But that’s just a time trial!” you may protest. Well, Sawe came back five months later to London and, although he still had rabbits to set the pace, took down a stacked field and ran another sub-2:03, claiming the victory in London in Kiptum-esque fashion with a blistering 13:56 split from 30k to 35k. Sawe has a short resume, but it’s about as impressive a resume as you’ll see in the sport so far. If he picks up a third win this fall, either at the World Championships or in another Major—especially an unpaced one like New York—he’ll inarguably be the world No. 1.

His biggest threat, however, may be hovering just behind him as Kiplimo made his marathon debut with a huge run of his own, clocking 2:03:37 for second. Short of winning a WMM in his first try, that’s also about as good a start to a marathoning career as you could ask for. And Kiplimo is officially 24 years old, with many, many prime years of marathoning ahead. So if he’s not the best marathoner in the world right now, he may be soon.

Then there’s Tola. Should he win another global gold, he would deserve at least an honorable mention nod in the conversation. He’s one of the best championship-style marathoners the world has ever seen, but he’s also less consistent than some of his rivals, registering a handful of DNFs among his great runs.

And then, of course, there’s Kipchoge. A 2:05:25 at 40 years old is an incredible performance, but right now it’s more of a footnote on the greatest career over 26.2 ever put together as Kipchoge enters his 13th year of marathoning. It’s feeling less and less likely that Kipchoge will ever reclaim world No. 1 status, but should he win Sydney in its first year as a World Marathon Major, he shouldn’t be shut out of the debate entirely.

The women’s battle for world’s best marathoner is arguably even murkier. Let’s look first at the podium in London:

1. Tigst Assefa, second-fastest all-time, Olympic silver medalist, 2x Berlin champ, now the London champ and women’s only WR holder at 2:15:50.

2. Joyciline Jepkosgei, 2x WMM champ, 4x London podium finisher.

3. Sifan Hassan, third-fastest all-time, Olympic champ, 2x WMM champ

Jepkosgei is an incredible runner, but she has run seven major marathons since 2021 and hasn’t won any, so she has to be counted out. Assefa vs. Hassan presents an interesting debate: they’re #2 (2:11:53) and #3 (2:13:44) on the all-time list, have only raced head-to-head twice and split the spoils, and neither has run a truly poor marathon (at least since Assefa’s random 2:34 debut in Riyadh in 2022). In 2024, Assefa finished second in London and second at the Olympics, compared with Hassan’s fourth-place finish in Tokyo and win in Paris.