by Justin Lagat
It is almost becoming a norm that world-leading times are run annually at the Tokyo Marathon. Ethiopians Tadese Takele and Sutume Kebede ran impressive world-leading times to win the men’s and women’s races at the 2025 Tokyo Marathon.
In different versions, Takele finished the men’s race strongly, while Kebede appeared to have struggled in the later stages of the women’s race.
A group of ten men had gone through the half marathon point in 1:01:17. That was the last point that Japanese Aoi Ota was in the leading pack as he and Ethiopia’s Segaye Getachew would drop back and form a single file of two chasers.
A little further back was another pack that comprised two Ugandans, Joshua Cheptegei and Stephen Kisa, among about six other runners.
At around the 28K, there was a surge at the front by Shadrack Kimining that left the leading pack in a single file. He would drop off at 30K, leaving a trio of Takele, Deresa Geleta and Vincent Ngetich at the front. Kenya’s Ngetich led as the two Ethiopians remained on his heels. It would appear that the podium positions had been taken then, and only the order of their names remained.
At 38K, Ngetich began to lose contact with the two Ethiopians as Takele took to the front and increased the pace. Takele was 11 seconds ahead of Geleta and 17 seconds ahead of Ngetich at 40K, where he crossed in 1:56:59.
Takele won in a world-leading 2:03:31 ahead of Geleta in 2:03:51 and Ngetich in 2:04:00.
In the women’s race, Kebede would slow down considerably in around the last 5 km of the race, but still ran a world leading 2:16:31 as she held on to avoid a disappointment from the two runners who were quickly beginning to gain on her. Kenya’s Winfrida Mosetii finished second in 2:16:56 ahead of another Ethiopian, Hawi Feysa, who completed the podium in 2:17:00.
Kebede had opened a considerable gap from the rest of her competitors early in the race and was already slightly over a minute ahead of her nearest competitor at 15K, where she crossed in 47:06. She crossed the halfway point in 1:06:20, a time that projected a finish time of under 2:13:00.
At 30K, where she crossed it in 1:34:44, she was already more than two and half minutes ahead of the chasers, Moseti and Feysa, who had made their way to second place and were at that point about to start closing the gap on Kebede.
