By David Monti, @d9monti
(c) 2026 Race Results Weekly, all rights reserved
NEW YORK (12-Mar) — On a cloudy and raw morning here with rain spitting down in Lower Manhattan, double-Olympic bronze medalist Grant Fisher addressed a clutch of reporters at the base of the Brooklyn Bridge where, on Sunday, he will have just passed the eight-kilometer mark of the United Airlines NYC Half, America’s largest half-marathon with some 30,000 runners. Fisher, 28, will be making his long-awaited half-marathon debut –and running his first-ever road race– and he tried to put into words what would define a successful race for him.
“That’s a difficult question,” said Fisher, who is the North American record holder for 10,000m (26:33.84). “I’m chasing more of a feeling than a time or a place.” He added: “I’m the rookie now.”
Sunday’s race, the 19th edition, features a superb professional field which boasts 26 Olympians and Paralympians. Ten men –led by defending champion and event record holder, Abel Kipchumba of Kenya (58:07 PB)– have broken 60 minutes for the half-marathon during their careers. Likely to be up at the front with Fisher will be fellow American Alex Maier (59:23 PB), Canadian Rory Linkletter (59:49), Kenyan Daniel Ebenyo (59:04), Moroccan Mohammed El Youssfi (59:21), Norwegian Sondre Nordstad Moen (59:48), and South African Adriaan Wildschutt (59:13).
But unlike most of the world’s top-quality half-marathons, there will be no pacemakers shepherding the leaders from Prospect Park in Brooklyn to Central Park in Manhattan. Like the TCS New York City Marathon, the course is decidedly hard with a series of hills in the first eight kilometers, followed by a flat(ish) section in the middle, and a final five kilometers which is nearly all uphill. That’s fine with Fisher, who sees Sunday’s race as both an important learning opportunity and a challenging competition.
“One of the reasons I picked this race is because time doesn’t matter,” Fisher said. “Technically, it’s a record-ineligible course, so that wipes one thing from my mind. I can just focus on racing. I’m up against some of the best half-marathoners in the world, people who have way more experience than me.” He continued: “I’m here to learn. I’m here to push myself. I’m ultimately here to figure out if I have a future in this side of the sport.”
With no Olympic Games or World Athletics Championships this year, 2026 is a great year for athletes like Fisher to experiment, especially those from North America who don’t have to worry about either this summer’s Commonwealth Games or European Athletics Championships. Fisher will have plenty of time to recover from the half-marathon before opening his track season which will include the Prefontaine Classic in Eugene, Oregon, in early July (where he will run the two-mile), and the USATF Outdoor Track & Field Championships here in New York at the end of the same month. The extra miles he has put in at high altitude at his winter training base in Flagstaff, Arizona, will help him both on Sunday and later on the track.
“There were a lot of things which stayed the same,” Fisher said of his training under coach Mike Scannell. “More volume is kind of the thing. More mileage, longer workouts, focusing on fueling, racing on the roads, new footwear, so a lot of things to change and reconsider. I feel like we’ve had some really good prep, so I’m excited and ready to go. It feels real now.”
Although Fisher confined himself to competing exclusively on the track since wrapping up his NCAA career at Stanford in the spring of 2019, he was an excellent cross country runner during his collegiate career. He took second at the NCAA Championships in 2018, and fifth in both 2017 and 2016. He said he was prepared for the ups and downs of Sunday’s race.
“I’ve been at 7000 feet (2134m) of altitude so even the smallest hill feels pretty aggressive,” Fisher explained. “My hill workouts are longer. I’m purposely having hilly routes on my easy runs where normally I try to find a flat, very simple run to do.” He continued: “The hills are all at the start and the end of this course. They’ll beat us up in the beginning. Hopefully I can relax a bit in the middle when we’re going up the east side of the island, then when we get in the park it’s hilly again. I’ll watch how people are reacting and surging and base my moves off of that.”
The closest parallel for Fisher’s move from the track to the roads is when Galen Rupp made his half-marathon debut at the NYC Half in 2010. Like Fisher, he did an indoor track season and came in with a fast 10,000m personal best (27:10.74 at that time). Although he fell in the early stages of the race and banged his hip, the then 24 year-old ran 1:00:30 and finished third (the course was different then with a 28m elevation loss). He moved to the marathon five years later, eventually winning an Olympic bronze medal in 2016, the Chicago Marathon in 2017, and running a personal best of 2:06:07 (pre supershoes).
Although Fisher alluded to his potential interest in the New York City Marathon in his comments today, he didn’t want to get ahead of himself. He emphasized that he needed to feel something special after Sunday’s race before taking another shot at high-level road racing.
“Whether it means I win the race or I get 30th in the race, it will be a feeling that I’m looking for of, is there more to give here, or do I need to stick on the track a little longer?” Fisher told reporters. “That’s what I’m looking for here. It’s really hard to describe. It’s not a time, it’s not a place. It’s a feeling of competition and a feeling of wanting something more out of myself. I’ll let you know after if I find it.”
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The United Airlines NYC Half will be covered locally in the Tri-State area by ABC New York, Channel 7 with live news cut-ins between 6:00 a.m. and 10:00 a.m. EDT The professional races will be covered by livestreams on ESPN+, abc7ny.com, and New York Road Runners digital channels beginning at 7:00 a.m. EDT.
PHOTO: Grant Fisher in New York City in advance of the 2026 United Airlines NYC Half (photo by Jane Monti for Race Results Weekly)
PHOTO: Grant Fisher winning the 10,000m at the 2024 USA Olympic Trials in Eugene, Ore. (photo by Jane Monti for Race Results Weekly)
ENDS
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