The 54th New York City Marathon is in the books, and what a race it was. Nearly 60,000 runners took to the streets of the Big Apple, and near-perfect weather conditions meant that times were fast and racing was fierce.

We got to witness both historically-fast and historically-close races, as three women broke the 22-year-old course record and the men’s race was decided by a photo finish, the smallest margin in the race’s history. Hellen Obiri is now a two-time champ—winning first in 2023 and again in 2025—and Benson Kipruto claimed his fourth World Marathon Major title by mere inches.

Full results can be found here. You can relive all the action( and jokes) from our watch-along on the CITIUS MAG YouTube channel below. Don’t forget to subscribe for more great running video content! A huge thank you to HOKA for making our entire weekend a success, and thanks to all of you who showed up to say hi, run with us, and support the runners!

The Hellen Obiri-Sharon Lokedi rivalry is GREAT for the sport.

For the second time this year, Hellen Obiri and Sharon Lokedi claimed the top two spots on a World Marathon Major podium. In April, Lokedi held off Obiri to claim her first Boston Marathon title as both shattered the course record. Once again, Obiri and Lokedi (plus third-placer Sheila Chepkirui, the 2024 champ) worked together to run the fastest time in New York history. Only this time, Obiri turned the tables on her rival with a blistering final 800 meters and a 2:19:51 victory. Their early teamwork paid off in several ways: Kenya swept the podium spots, all three women broke Margaret Okayo’s 2003 record by 2+ minutes, and Olympic champ Sifan Hassan was run out of contention early into the second half of the race.

Obiri improves to 5-2 against Lokedi in their careers, and in four of those seven races, the two women—who, despite their epic battles, are quite friendly with one another—finished one place apart. Obiri returns to the top step of a marathon podium for the first time since her 2024 Boston victory, which isn’t a particularly long drought, until you realize that the 35-year-old has won four of her eight career marathons. Very few runners can claim a 50% win rate at this level, and it’s made more impressive by the fact that Obiri has often taken on the very best in the world to earn those wins.

Lokedi, for her part, has only finished lower than fourth in one of seven marathons, and she picks up her fifth WMM podium finish. The longer these two go at it, the more exciting each major finish is going to be.

Chris Chavez nearly jinxes Benson Kipruto… but he makes history anyway.

For those watching along on the CITIUS MAG YouTube broadcast, Chris Chavez came very close to ending up on “Old Takes Exposed.” With about half a mile to go in the men’s race, he called Benson Kipruto as the race winner. Kipruto, the Paris bronze medalist and a three-time World Marathon Major winner, had survived the whittling down of the lead pack over the second half and found himself in the driver’s seat in Central Park, putting the hurt on 2024 London champ Alexander Mutiso Munyao. There was only one problem: with 200 meters left in the race, Mutiso found one last gear and began to reel Kipruto back in. Kipruto was focused on navigating the slight uphill finish of New York’s and only realized Mutiso was so close in the final steps, turning on one last burst of speed to stay ahead of his challenger. It was a true photo finish, as 0.3 seconds separated the duo and both men were credited with a time of 2:08:09.

Ultimately, Kipruto remained in front and Chris’s call held up, which also meant history was made: Kipruto became the first man ever to complete the U.S. major career sweep, winning Boston in 2021 and Chicago in 2022 along with his 2025 victory in New York. He’s now only got London, Berlin, and Sydney on his list as he’s last year’s Tokyo champion (at least, until Abbott keeps adding races to its circuit).

Kenyan runners continued their dominant streak, as 2021 champ Albert Korir rounded out the podium to complete the sweep on the men’s side as well. Mutiso, for his part, proved he’s a versatile marathoner, as up until this point his best races had only been on the flat courses like Valencia.

Fiona O’Keeffe and Emily Sisson are BACK.

For much of the broadcast, the most surprising (to some) athlete to see on-screen was Fiona O’Keeffe, last year’s U.S. Olympic Trials champion, who hung with the leaders through 30 kilometers before ultimately getting dropped in the ensuing carnage. O’Keeffe ended up with a 2:22:49 fourth-place finish in her second completed marathon, breaking Molly Seidel’s U.S. course record in the process. It was an impressive comeback performance for the 27-year-old, who battled injuries last season that led to her controversial choice to start, then immediately drop out, of the Olympic marathon. But talent doesn’t go away, as the saying goes, and with a year of healthy training back under her belt, O’Keeffe showed she can contend with the world’s best.

A few places behind her was another runner who hasn’t raced a marathon since the Olympics: American record holder Emily Sisson. Sisson finished eighth in 2:25:05, the fourth top-ten Major finish of her career, after a year of racing sparingly. Despite making her marathon debut in 2019, Sisson is still only 34 years old and clearly has a lot of good years on the roads ahead of her.

Even the all-time greats are human, too.

Simply seeing the likes of Sifan Hassan, Eliud Kipchoge, and Kenenisa Bekele on the streets of New York was a treat, regardless of outcome. But age and workload can get to even the best runners in history, and all three ended up having a day that was not up to their astronomically-high standards.

Hassan, in her third marathon of 2025, hung tough after clearly suffering a bit early in the race, yo-yoing off the leaders once Chepkirui and company made their move, and she would end up sixth in 2:24:43. Coming back to the roads just two months after her victory in Sydney may have been too much, but Hassan is still a competitor, and after running 6 minute pace from mile 20 onward, she picked it up just enough in the final mile to hold off seventh-placer Jessica Warner-Judd by two seconds.

Kipchoge came here to do one thing: finish off his Abbott World Marathon Major six seven-star circuit with his first NYC Marathon. And that’s what he did, although it wasn’t pretty: he finished 17th in 2:14:36, the lowest placing and slowest finishing time of his career. Kipchoge, who turns 41 on Wednesday, announced after the race that he’s planning a two-year, seven-continent “World Tour” of marathon racing as his next chapter.

Bekele had the worst go of everyone, as he ran with the chase pack through halfway (65:21), didn’t record a split after mile 17 and DNF’d.

Minnesota keeps churning out great distance runners.

2024 Olympian Dakotah Popehn wasn’t on the start line in New York (she finished seventh in Chicago last month instead), but two of her teammates made the trip east and represented Minnesota Distance Elite incredibly well.

Annie Frisbie ran tough and smart to finish fifth in 2:24:12, the highest World Marathon Major finish of her career to date. Combined with Frisbie’s eighth-place finish in Boston this year and the fact that, had O’Keeffe not beaten her to the line, she would’ve broken the U.S. course record, and it’s becoming increasingly clear that Frisbie is a force to be reckoned with both nationally and internationally in any marathon she chooses.

In the men’s race, Joel Reichow didn’t let the bright lights of the big city get to him, as he took top American honors in a lifetime best of 2:09:56 for sixth. It was only his second major, but Reichow executed flawlessly, hitting halfway with the chase pack and negative splitting 65:21-64:35 to get the job done.