Tamirat Tola Smashes Beijing Marathon Course Record in 2:03:10

Olympic champion Tamirat Tola produced one of the great distance-running performances of the year on Sunday, winning the 2026 Beijing Marathon in 2:03:10 and obliterating a course record that had stood for seven years.

The 35-year-old Ethiopian ran 3 minutes and 56 seconds inside the previous mark of 2:07:06, set by Kenya's Mathew Kipkoech Kisorio in 2019, on a course where no man had ever gone under 2:07. The time was also the fastest marathon ever run on Chinese soil, improving the previous best of 2:05:35 set by Kenya's Philimon Kiptoo Kipchumba at the 2023 Shanghai Marathon — a mark World Athletics listed as the Chinese all-comers' record — by 2 minutes and 25 seconds.

Tola spent most of the morning at the front of the field and was never seriously threatened, finishing 1 minute and 24 seconds clear of his compatriot Muktar Edris. Before the race, he told Chinese media that he had spent around six months preparing for Beijing, with a personal best and the course record as his targets. He delivered on the second and very nearly on the first.

A record demolished, not broken

Course records are usually measured in seconds. This one fell by nearly four minutes. The arithmetic tells the story: subtract the two marks and the margin is 3:56, the kind of improvement that typically takes a generation on an established World Athletics Platinum Label course.

Sunday's run was only 11 seconds slower than Tola's personal best of 2:02:59, set when he finished fifth at the London Marathon in April — the race where Kenya's Sabastian Sawe became the first man to run an official marathon in under two hours, clocking 1:59:30. Sawe was in Beijing during marathon weekend as well, visiting Peking University to share training insights with young Chinese runners, but this weekend belonged to Tola.

Rain on Saturday gave way to cool, clear conditions on Sunday. The race began at Tiananmen Square and finished at the Beijing Olympic Park, drawing 32,000 runners from more than 265,000 applicants — roughly eight sign-ups for every available place. First held in 1981, the Beijing Marathon also served this year as China's National Marathon Championships.

An Ethiopian sweep of the men's podium

Tola was not the only man inside the old record. Edris, a two-time world champion at 5,000 metres, was second in 2:04:34, which is 2:32 inside the former course best and not far off the 2:04:07 he ran when he finished fifth at the Tokyo Marathon in March. Adane Kebede Gebre completed an all-Ethiopian podium in third with a personal best of 2:05:10, which is 1:56 inside the old record.

Three men under the old course record in a single race — on a course where nobody had previously broken 2:07 — underlines how complete Ethiopia's dominance was.

The domestic titles went to home runners. Li Dalin finished fourth overall in a personal best of 2:08:30 to claim the Chinese men's championship, while Anchinalu Dessie Genaneh retained the women's crown for Ethiopia in 2:20:36, a full 5:32 faster than her winning time a year earlier. China's Cirencuomu finished second in a personal best of 2:23:48 to become the Chinese women's champion, with Lu Ying completing the podium in third.

The road to the 2027 World Championships

Tola's record-setting run also served as a dress rehearsal for what comes next in the Chinese capital. Beijing will host the World Athletics Championships from September 11 to 19, 2027, at the National Stadium — 12 years after the city staged the 2015 edition — and the Olympic champion's 2:03:10 sits well inside the 2:06:00 men's entry standard, inside a qualifying window that remains open until May 2, 2027.

The performance underlined Tola's status as one of the leading marathon runners of his generation. He won the men's marathon at the 2022 World Athletics Championships in Eugene in 2:05:36, claimed Olympic gold at the Paris 2024 Games in an Olympic-record 2:06:26, and won New York in a course record of 2:04:58 in between. Under the Beijing Marathon's prize policy, the victory is worth $50,000, with an additional 60,000 yuan bonus for breaking the course record.

Notably absent from the field was Lemi Berhanu, who had won the Beijing Marathon in 2024 and 2025 but chose to race the Amsterdam Marathon instead on the same Sunday. Berhanu won there in 2:03:33 — a fine run of its own, and still 23 seconds slower than Tola's time in Beijing.