How to watch the 2020 Dubai Marathon
Tune in tonight for what is sure to be an exciting race, with great depth on both sides
The 2020 Standard Chartered Dubai Marathon takes place tonight 9 p.m. ET (6 a.m. Friday local time) in Dubai, UAE, and LetsRun.com will be live-streaming the race.
Degefa seeks second Dubai Marathon crown while Deksisa and Tura set to clash.
Fun fact: the women's race is set to feature five Ethiopian women who've ran a sub 2:22 marathon.
?:https://t.co/OU1aa46NCj pic.twitter.com/Wwbt11cuTw
— World Athletics (@WorldAthletics) January 23, 2020
With a generous prize purse of $100,000 for the winners (though that is less than half what it has been in the past), Dubai attracts a deep field of international elites on both the men’s and women’s sides, with 2019 Boston Marathon winner Worknesh Degefa of Ethiopia returning tonight. (She was second last year, in 2:17:41, won her marathon debut there in 2017, and finished fourth in 2018.) Five other women with personal bests under 2:24, all of them from Ethiopia, will toe the line tonight in Dubai.
The men’s race will see 2018 Berlin and 2019 Barcelona Half-Marathon champion Eric Kiptanui’s marathon debut after pacing Eliud Kipchoge to both his fourth London Marathon win and his 1:59 performance in Vienna in 2019. Kiptanui is up against four Ethiopians also making their marathon debuts, and no fewer than 11 men with sub-2:08 PBs, including Solomon Deksisa (who won both Hamburg and Mumbai in 2018 and was second at Amsterdam in 2019) and Japanese national marathon record-holder Suguru Osako, though according to LetsRun he is only planning to run 20 to 25K at Dubai, since he’s racing Tokyo on February 29. Kiptanui’s half-marathon PB is 58:42, the seventh-fastest time ever recorded.
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It will be interesting to see whether the course records fall again this year, which the women’s has for two years and the men’s for three years in a row, which most attribute to the rise of the Nike carbon-plated shoes.
Watch the Dubai Marathon tonight at 9 p.m. ET here.