BOSTON – Switzerland’s Marcel Hug won his ninth Boston Marathon men’s wheelchair title on Monday, finishing in an unofficial time of 1 hour, 16 minutes, 6 seconds in adverse conditions. He missed breaking his own course record by 33 seconds.
Hug’s fourth consecutive win in Boston moves him to second all-time in Boston men’s wheelchair history, trailing only South African great Ernst van Dyck’s record of 10 titles between 2001 and 2014.
American racer Daniel Romanchuk finished second in 1:22:44, followed by Jetz Platt of the Netherlands in 1:24:13.
Britain’s Eden Rainbow-Cooper won the women’s wheelchair race.
Hug quickly jumped to the front of the field and took a 13-second lead over Britain’s David Weir three miles into the race. By the halfway point the lead had increased to 55 seconds.
Since winning the Berlin Marathon in 2022, Hug has lost only one of seven world major titles, when he finished second at the New York Marathon in 2024.
The race took place on a clear morning and the starting temperature was around 40.
Runners were expecting fast times in the 130th edition of the world’s oldest and most prestigious annual marathon due to the steepest field in the event’s history and ideal weather.
The athletes arrived in Hopkinton with frost on the ground and temperatures in the 30s. The temperature had warmed to 45 degrees (7 °C) by the time defending champions Sharon Lokadi and John Korir started the race, with more than 30,000 others racing after them.
It was the coldest opening temperature since 2018, when it was 38 degrees and raining. Last year, the thermostat was at 58 when the runners left.
