Alex Yee to run London Marathon, aims for 2:07 finish
The Olympic champion will be jumping up in distance and dropping the swim and the bike this April
Photo by:
Kevin Mackinnon
Paris 2024 triathlon gold medallist Alex Yee has announced his plans to race the 2025 London Marathon. The British triathlon star isn’t done with short-course multi-sport racing just yet, but with the L.A. Olympics still years away, he decided now is a good time to give the marathon a try.
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Yee is a tremendous runner, which he puts on display in pretty much every triathlon he enters. At the Paris Olympics, he won gold after chasing down New Zealand’s Hayden Wilde in the race’s closing kilometre for a remarkable comeback. In addition to becoming Olympic champion in 2024, he grabbed the World Triathlon Championship Series title. Now, he is pivoting to a side-quest of sorts as he focuses on the marathon.
“With running, I feel like I’ve never stopped scratching the itch,” he told The Guardian. “I want to give it a real go.” He admitted that he didn’t give himself the biggest training window—he only started training for the marathon about six months out from the April 27 race—but he believes he can show up ready to do something special.
“If the planets align, I’d love to run in the ballpark of two hours, seven minutes to 2:10,” he said. If he did manage to run somewhere in 2:07, he would catapult himself into the British history books. To date, only four British men have run sub-2:08, including Olympic great Mo Farah. Two of the others on that elite list ran their PBs at the London Marathon last year.
If Yee misses his hope of 2:07 but still runs sub-2:10, he will fall somewhere in the top 21 fastest results in British marathon history.
While he wants to perform well on the day, to Yee, the race is about much more than just the running. As he told Athletics Weekly in an interview at the BBC Sports Personality of the Year Awards, he has always loved the London Marathon.
“It’s one of the most amazing days that London has,” he said. “It’s the best way to showcase London and I’d love to be a part of it.”