Men's Boston Marathon 2025: Korir Seizes the Lead and Never Lets Go

• John Korir wins in 2:04:45 (4:45/mi), pulling away from a four-man lead pack to take the tape by 19 seconds over Alphonce Felix Simbu.
• Simbu and Cybrian Kotut both finish in 2:05:04, with Simbu's late surge — the fastest closing split from 25.2 miles to the finish — edging Kotut for 2nd by the finest of margins.
• Conner Mantz, 4th in 2:05:08, was the top American finisher, running the 3rd-fastest split of the race from 25K to 30K and holding off a strong late charge from the field.
• Muktar Edris posted the fastest split from 10K to 15K among the men, finishing 5th in 2:05:59 — a minute and 14 seconds back of the winner after fading slightly in the final miles.

John Korir arrived at the front early and stayed there. Entering the first 5K-to-10K split, he was already posting the fastest men's split of that segment, and by 10K he had moved from 4th to 1st — a position he would not relinquish for the remaining 23-plus miles. On a cool Patriots' Day in Boston, with 50°F temperatures and a light breeze that gave the 16,105-man field near-ideal racing conditions, Korir ran with authority at 4:45/mi from wire to wire.

Behind him, the race for 2nd and 3rd was a genuine thriller. Cybrian Kotut had held 2nd place almost from the opening miles, running patiently and consistently through the middle of the race with the fastest men's split from 15K to 20K. Alphonce Felix Simbu was a different story — sitting 12th at the first checkpoint, he worked his way through the field across every subsequent segment, and his fastest-in-the-field closing split from 25.2 miles to the finish was enough to run Kotut down. Both men stopped the clock at 2:05:04, but the timing left no ambiguity: Simbu took 2nd, Kotut 3rd.

Conner Mantz was the leading American, crossing in 2:05:08 for 4th — a performance anchored by a 3rd-fastest men's split between 25K and 30K, suggesting he ran the second half of the race with real conviction. Muktar Edris rounded out the top five in 2:05:59, having briefly shown the fastest legs in the field through the 10K-to-15K stretch before the Kenyans and Tanzanians ahead of him proved too strong to reel in. Rory Linkletter (2:07:02) and Clayton Young (2:07:04) led a cluster of North American runners through positions six through eleven, all finishing within about three minutes of the champion.