Chicago 13.1 Women: Chemutai Commands the Heat

• Joyline Chemutai wins in 1:11:45 (5:28/mi), never relinquishing the lead across all five checkpoints — the dominant performance of the women's race.
• Jackie Gaughan runs the fastest women's 8K→10K split to close from 3rd to 2nd, finishing in 1:12:41 — just 56 seconds back.
• Mao Kiyota posts the fastest women's closing split (15K→finish) to move from 4th to 3rd, crossing in 1:13:00.
• Betty Sigei fades from 2nd to 4th in the back half, finishing 1:14:48, while Kaylee Flanagan holds 5th wire-to-wire in 1:14:53.

With 79°F heat and a 20 mph wind bearing down on Chicago, Joyline Chemutai made the conditions look almost irrelevant. She led from the gun and never wavered — her fastest women's split on the 5K→8K segment was the early signal that the race for the win was effectively over. Running 5:28/mi across 13.1 miles in that heat is a statement, and Chemutai delivered it clearly.

Behind her, the real drama unfolded in the chase pack. Betty Sigei had held 2nd from the opening checkpoint through 10K, but Jackie Gaughan — sitting patiently in 3rd — struck on the 8K→10K segment, posting the second-fastest women's split on that stretch to move into 2nd. Gaughan held that position to the line in 1:12:41. Mao Kiyota was even more of a closer: sitting 4th through 10K, she unleashed the fastest women's finishing split (15K→finish) to overtake Sigei in the final stretch and claim 3rd in 1:13:00. Sigei, who had run a strong front half, was left with 4th in 1:14:48, just five seconds ahead of Kaylee Flanagan's steady 1:14:53 in 5th.

Further back, a cluster of Chicago-area runners filled the top ten, with Rachel Dadamio (8th, 1:17:43) and Camille Blackman (10th, 1:18:35) both improving on their previous finishes here — Dadamio had gone 5th in 1:18:29 in 2022, and Blackman had gone 5th in 1:20:35 in 2023. Flannery Davis Love (11th, 1:19:22) had been 4th here in 2023 in 1:18:35, a slight step back this time around. Katie Sherron (12th, 1:19:40) was the top finisher among the 40-year-olds in a field of 3,877 women — a sharp result in difficult conditions.