By David Monti, @d9monti
(c) 2025 Race Results Weekly, all rights reserved
TOKYO (14-Sep) — After two hours, 24 minutes and 30 seconds the women’s marathon at the 20th World Athletics Championships here had yet to be decided. Two of the best marathoners in history, 2021 Olympic champion Peres Jepchirchir of Kenya and 2024 Olympic silver medalist Tigist Assefa of Ethiopia, had entered National Stadium with barely any daylight between them. It was anyone’s race.
“I was so exhausted,” Jepchirchir told reporters when asked to talk about the final 300 meters of the race on the track.
Assefa made the first move, passing her Kenyan rival on the backstretch, but she did not shake her. Jepchirchir stayed on her heels and tried to gather the strength for just one more push forward after running nearly 42 kilometers in hot and very humid conditions.
“At 100 meters when I saw the finishing line… let me try if I’m going to win,” Jepchirchir said she told herself. “Thank God that I managed.”
Rounding the final bend Jepchirchir shot ahead of Assefa who, despite being a former Olympic 800-meter runner with a 1:59.24 personal best, had no answer. Spreading her arms, Jepchirchir sailed through the finish line to win her first world marathon title (and her fourth overall world title) in 2:24:43. She had also won the world half-marathon title three times.
“I feel grateful,” said Jepchirchir, who thought of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games even though the marathon was held in Sapporo. “I feel good memories here; I was not expecting that. I love Tokyo.”
Assefa crossed two seconds later to take the silver, a bittersweet result for the former world record holder.
“I guessed that it would be all about a sprint in the last 100 meters,” she told the flash quotes team after the race. “It was the same at Paris Olympics when I also finished second and lost to Sifan (Hassan). But I don’t like to think I lost gold. I always try to be positive and think that I won the silver.”
How those two women arrived to the stadium together is a tale of two races. For the first 28 kilometers, American Susanna Sullivan ran alone through the streets of Tokyo. The main contenders were content to stay together and not push the pace, and Sullivan just wanted to stretch her legs and run her own race. By the 10-K mark (34:21) Sullivan only had teammate Jessica McClain for company, and by 15-K she was 21 seconds ahead of McClain and 25 seconds ahead of the main pack. Her lead over the main group would peak at 63 seconds at the 20-K point.
“The whole time when I was in the front I was just reminding myself that they are going to come back,” Sullivan said. “You have to run your own race and you can’t panic.”
McClain was rolled up by Jepchirchir, Assefa, Sutume Asefa Kebede of Ethiopia, Stella Chesang of Uganda, Magdalyne Masai of Kenya in the 26th kilometer. That group caught Sullivan, who had been on pace for a 2:25:00 finish, at the 28-K point.
“When they went by I kept it together,” said Sullivan, who maintained her pace.
It was at this point that the second race started. Assefa and Jepchirchir quickly pulled away from the others and proceeded to run from 30-K to the stadium side by side. They took drinks and soaked themselves with cold towels and sponges as they went, trying to stay cool. Like two gunfighters facing each other in an old western, the tension built and built until that final circuit of the track.
But the biggest surprise of the race would come later when Julia Paternain –a novice marathoner representing Uruguay who lives and trains in Flagstaff, Ariz.– tiptoed through the field from 15th position at 25-K, to tenth place at 30-K, to sixth place at 35-K. Paternain, who was born in Mexico but grew up in Great Britain before having a collegiate running career at Penn State and the University of Arkansas, moved into third position in the 39th kilometer. She had no idea where she was in the running order.
“I had no clue,” Paternain told reporters. “Around halfway there was a pack of maybe ten or 15 women ahead of me, and slowly that pack started to break up. I was just trying to make sure that my miles were consistent. I knew if I stayed consistent that everyone around me could do what they wanted.”
Paternain, who was running just her second marathon, entered the stadium a clear third and won the bronze medal in 2:27:23, the first-ever medal for a Uruguayan athlete at the World Athletics Championships. She did not realize that she made the podium, and wasn’t even sure if she needed to do an additional lap inside of the stadium.
“I could not believe it when I crossed that finish line,” she said. “I had no idea I was in third. I also wasn’t sure that was the finish line; I wanted to make sure. I was in so much shock. I truly cannot believe it.”
Sullivan finished fourth in 2:28:17, followed by Finland’s Alisa Vaino in fifth (2:28:32). McClain, who had run with Sullivan in the early kilometers, finished eighth in 2:29:20. Masai, who was contending for a medal late in the race, was forced to drop out.
A total of 63 women finished the race out of 73 starters, about the same as the 65 who finished in Budapest two years ago. The men’s marathon will be contested here tomorrow morning on the same course.
PHOTO: Julia Paternain of Uruguay finishing third in the marathon at the 2025 World Athletics Championships in Tokyo (photo by Jane Monti for Race Results Weekly)
PHOTO: Peres Jepchirchir of Kenya winning the marathon at the 2025 World Athletics Championships in Tokyo (photo by Jane Monti for Race Results Weekly)
PHOTO: Susanna Sullivan of the United States finishing fourth in the marathon at the 2025 World Athletics Championships in Tokyo (photo by Jane Monti for Race Results Weekly)
PHOTO: The top-3 finishers of the marathon at the 2025 World Athletics Championships in Tokyo: Peres Jepchirchir (gold), Tigist Assefa of Ethiopia (silver) and Julia Paternain of Uruguay (bronze) (photo by Jane Monti for Race Results Weekly)
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