Boston Marathon M40-44: Primoz Kobe Leads a Deep, Fast Field at the 129th

• Kobe wins in 2:19:45 (5:20/mi), the fastest in a 2,247-strong M40-44 field at Boston's 129th edition.
• Three men — Morse, Rowe, and Davis — finished within three seconds of each other (2:26:54, 2:26:57, and 2:26:59), separated by just five seconds across 26.2 miles.
• Daniel Rowe's charge was the race's great momentum story: he entered the women's field tracking at 355th before the first checkpoint and climbed all the way to 115th by the finish — a relentless, 240-place surge across the full course.
• Samuel Bradbury posted the 51st-fastest split in the women's field on the 40K-to-finish stretch, helping him close to 2nd in 2:22:23.

Primoz Kobe controlled the M40-44 race with authority, running a 5:20/mi average across the point-to-point Hopkinton-to-Copley Square course to finish in 2:19:45. That's a margin of 2:38 over runner-up Samuel Bradbury (2:22:23, 5:26/mi) — a gap that was never seriously in doubt. Bradbury from New Hampshire was strong in the closing miles, posting one of the sharper late splits in the women's field on the 40K-to-finish segment, but Kobe's lead was already well established by then.

Third place went to Dustin Bybee of Utah in 2:25:06 (5:32/mi), who made his own late push — his 48th-fastest split among women on the 25.2M-to-finish stretch helped him hold off a charging back half of the field. He crossed 1:21 ahead of 4th-place Sam Morse, which made the gap from 3rd to 4th feel far more decisive than what followed: Morse (2:26:54), Daniel Rowe (2:26:57), and Jesse Davis (2:26:59) essentially ran identical finish times, five seconds covering three athletes after 26.2 miles of racing.

Rowe's race was the most dramatic arc in the data. Starting conservatively — or simply going out in a very large pack — he sat 355th in the women's field before the first checkpoint, then ground his way forward segment by segment, reaching 115th by the finish line. That's a sustained, race-long move that never stopped. Tom Clifford (7th, 2:28:04), Patrick Reaves (8th, 2:28:26), Peter Mackrell (9th, 2:29:41), and Bartosz Olszewski (10th, 2:29:48) rounded out a top ten where every finisher broke 2:30. In a field of 2,247, that depth is the real story of M40-44 at Boston 2025.