World champion Gotytom Gebreslase and world record-holder and double Olympic champion Eliud Kipchoge will make their Boston Marathon debuts on 17 April 2023, joining six former winners of the World Athletics Elite Platinum Label road race.
Although this will be Gebreslase’s first Boston Marathon, it is far from her first time racing in Boston. The Ethiopian world champion has finished runner-up at the Boston Half Marathon twice and has placed in the top five three times at the Boston 5K. Along with winning the world title, Gebreslase placed third at both the Berlin Marathon and New York City Marathons this year.
Two-time victor Lelisa Desisa Defending champion Evans Chebet, 2021 winner Benson Kipruto will be part of a historically deep men’s elite race. Among the returning champions in the women’s field are Edna Kiplagat, Atsede Baysa and Desiree Linden.
Almost exactly one year after winning the 2021 Boston Marathon, Lelisa won the Chicago Marathon in a PB of 2:04:24. Lelisa Desisa enters Boston with vital experience, having placed in the top two four times at the Boston Marathon. April marks the 10-year anniversary of his first victory, one in which he donated his champion’s medal back to the City of Boston in recognition of the tragedy of 15 April 2013.
Chebet stormed to a 2:06:51 win at the Boston Marathon earlier this year then ran to victory at the New York City Marathon in November. In 2022, Chebet became just the sixth man in history to win the Boston and New York City Marathons in the same year.
Atsede Baysa, the 2016 Boston Marathon winner, also returns. Also a past winner in Chicago and Paris, Baysa finished eighth at the 2021 Boston Marathon. Linden, the winner in 2018, will be racing in her 10th Boston Marathon.

Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone and Mondo Duplantis were named World Athletics Athletes of the Year after world record-breaking performances in 2022.
McLaughlin-Levrone, who lowered her 400m hurdles world record twice this year, won the award for the first time. She became the first American to win Athlete of the Year since fellow 400m hurdler Dalilah Muhammad in 2019.
The other finalists were Nigeria’s Tobi Amusan, who broke the 100m hurdles world record en route to the world title; Jamaica’s Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, who won her fifth world 100m title; Peru’s Kimberly Garcia, who swept the 20km and 35km race walk world titles, and Venezuela’s Yulimar Rojas, who broke her own triple jump world record and swept the indoor and outdoor world titles.
Duplantis, the Louisiana-raised Swede, won the men’s award for the second time in three years. He upped his pole vault world record three times in 2022 and swept the world indoor and outdoor and Diamond League titles in the event.
The other men’s finalists were Moroccan steeplechaser Soufiane El Bakkali, who went undefeated in 2022; Norwegian runner Jakob Ingebrigtsen, the world outdoor 5000m champion who ran the world’s fastest mile in 21 years; Kenyan Eliud Kipchoge, who broke his own marathon world record by 30 seconds, and American Noah Lyles, who broke Michael Johnson‘s 26-year-old national record in the 200m.
Erriyon Knighton became the first athlete to twice win the Rising Star award, given to the top U20 track and field athlete.
Knighton, 18, took 200m bronze at the world championships on July 21 in Eugene, Oregon, becoming the youngest individual sprint medalist in championships history. He was part of a U.S. medal sweep with Lyles and Kenny Bednarek.