By David Monti, @d9monti
(c) 2023 Race Results Weekly, all rights reserved
BUDAPEST (25-Aug) — On Saturday at 7:00 a.m. local time in Budapest, the women’s marathon will step off from Heroes’ Square in the city center at the World Athletics Championships 2023. Seventy-eight athletes from 47 countries are on the official start list, nearly double the 40 who competed in Eugene a year ago!
How to watch the World Athletics Championships 2023 Women’s Marathon?
You can watch live streaming broadcast of the women’s marathon race on Day 8 at the world track and field championship on Peacock TV. Fans in the United States will need to tune in at 1:00 a.m. ET to watch the live broadcast.
Most of the race will be held on one roadway, Andrássy Avenue, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It’s a wide boulevard which is usually teeming with traffic. Athletes will do five out-and-back circuits. The first is 2.2 kilometers, and the next four are 10 kilometers.
The runners will pass landmarks like the House of Terror Museum, Opera House, and Hungarian Academy of Sciences before crossing the iconic Széchenyi Chain Bridge on the side of the Danube River.
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The competitors will loop around Buda Castle, go back over the bridge, then head back to Heroes’ Square for the next circuit and eventually the finish.
Two of the three medalists from Eugene are on the start list. Ethiopia’s Gotytom Gebreslase hopes to bring home another gold medal, while Israel’s Lonah Chemtai Salpeter hopes to move up from the bronze medal position she achieved a year ago.
Because Gebreslase got a “bye” to enter here as defending champion, Ethiopia has another three women on their squad: Tsehay Gemechu (2:16:56 PB), Amane Beriso (2:14:58) and Yalemzerf Yehualaw (2:18:53). All four Ethiopian women are ranked in the top-8 in the world under the World Athletics points system.
Other medal contenders include Kenya’s Rosemary Wanjiru, the 2023 Tokyo Marathon champion (2:16:28 PB); Eritrea’s Nazret Weldu, the fourth place finisher from Eugene (2:20:29); Japan’s Mizuki Matsuda, the 2022 Osaka Women’s Marathon champion (2:20:52); and the United States’ Keira D’Amato, the former national record holder (2:19:12 PB). A total of seven women have run sub-2:20 during their careers.
However, the high heat and humidity expected here makes handicapping this race particularly difficult. According to weather.com, the start time temperature will be 23C/73F with an oppressive 79% humidity, and will likely feel hotter with no cloud cover and little shade (the start/finish area has no shade at all).
By 9:00 a.m. the temperature is expected to rise to 27C/80F with 62% humidity. By comparison, in Eugene it was just 10C/50F at start with 90% humidity, rising only to 16C/61F at finish with 75% humidity.
No American woman has ever won a world marathon title. The most recent medalist was Amy Cragg who took the bronze in London in 2017. The other medalist was Marianne Dickerson who won silver in the inaugural championships in Helsinki in 1983.
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