Berlin rarely needs much encouragement to feel fast, but Sabastian Sawe’s withdrawal changed the shape of Sunday’s BMW BERLIN-MARATHON in a major way. With the injured world record holder now out and due to attend only as a guest of honour, the race has lost its only sub-2:03 runner and become something more open, and perhaps even more dangerous for the rest of the field: a race with course-record ambitions but no obvious benchmark at the very top.
That matters because Berlin has long been the place where elite marathon times are stretched. It was here in 1995 that the 2:08:00 barrier was first broken, and it was also the stage for Eliud Kipchoge’s 2:01:09 world record in 2022. Now, after Sawe’s exit, organisers are still talking about a very fast race. Race director Mark Milde said he expected a thrilling contest and hoped for a course record, with the early pace for the lead group aimed at around 2:01.
The depth is still real. There are 26 runners on the start list already under 2:08:00, and the field includes names with recent form and serious ranges of ability. Guye Adola is back in a city where he has history: he finished second behind Kipchoge in 2017 in 2:03:46, won Berlin in 2021, and then won the Rotterdam Marathon this spring in 2:03:54. Gabriel Geay is also chasing a reset after saying he is glad to have a second chance to run in Berlin and that he is in good shape, while Selemon Barega arrives after winning the Tokyo 2021 10,000 m Olympic title and saying he has trained well and wants to improve further in Berlin.
The race is not short on proven talent beyond that group. Kenenisa Bekele, Shura Kitata, Getaneh Molla, Aaron Bienenfeld, Sebastian Hendel and Haftom Welday all add to the sense that this is still a serious elite contest rather than a softened one. The start list also includes eleven Japanese runners, which adds another layer of depth to a field already spread across 162 nations and backed by more than 56,000 entries overall.
Still, Sawe’s withdrawal changes the competitive logic. Without a runner with a recent sub-2:03 marker in the field, the race becomes less about whether someone can chase him and more about whether the pace and the depth can produce a time fast enough to satisfy Berlin’s own standards. That is a subtle difference, but an important one. A race can be open and still brutal; in Berlin, it can also become record-minded very quickly.
The most interesting part now is that Sunday no longer looks like a one-man reference point. It looks like a race where several athletes can believe the door is open. Berlin has seen that story before, and it has a habit of making the boldest athletes pay for trying to write it too early.
