Tola out to repeat New York success
Callum Hawkins deserves some luck on the long road back from injury
TAMIRAT TOLA feels a carefully planned build-up will give him every chance of adding the London Marathon title to his success in New York.
The 32-year-old Ethiopian – world champion from 2022 in Oregon – clocked a course record of two hours, four minutes and 58 seconds when he won in Manhattan last November and hopes his meticulous preparations will allow him to again hit top form today, having come third last year.
“[Winning in] London is not easy, but I worked hard to win New York and my training has all been OK since then, so I am ready,” said Tola, who also took the 2023 Great North Run title. “Everything is good with what my coaches have prepared for me to win, so we can hope for a good result on Sunday.”
The late Kelvin Kiptum, who was killed in a car accident in February aged 24, set a London Marathon record with his time of 2hrs 1min and 25secs last year. While that is unlikely to be tested today, Tola is confident of a swift pace.
“If we go together to help each other, then we will run with a better time,” he said. “It depends on a pacemaker, but it is okay for me to go fast, and if it is a normal [pace] then that is also okay.”
In the elite women’s race, world record holder Tigst Assefa hopes to produce a women’s-only best time in her first London Marathon, saying: “My training has gone really well and I have done all the training that has been set by my coach. I feel I am ready for the race.”
ELITE sport, as every athlete knows all too well, is a brutal place. Show me an athlete who claims never to have faced an obstacle and I’ll show you a liar. Some, however, have it worse than others in terms of challenges that confront them and in a Scottish context, few have had a rockier ride than Callum Hawkins.
But finally, there seems to be light at the end of the tunnel for the 31-year-old.
Hawkins has long been viewed as one of Scotland’s most talented runners, particularly when he moved up to the marathon at the unusually early age of 23, when he finished 12th at the Frankfurt Marathon in 2015.
There was more to come with top-10 finishes at the 2016 London marathon and Rio Olympic Games, followed the next year with an astonishing fourth-place finish at the World Championships.
In 2018, Hawkins seemed on track to win his first major title. Despite the searing heat in Australia’s Gold Coast, the Kilbarchan man looked a dead cert to win marathon gold at the Commonwealth Games. Just over a mile from the finish line, Hawkins looked home and dry.
But few observers will forget what happened next. With a two-minute lead over the field, the final mile of the Commonwealth marathon looked like it would be a procession for Hawkins.
But first there was a wobble, then there was a stumble, then Hawkins collapsed at the side of the road.
Several times he tried and failed to get up before dragging his body back on to the road, trying to regain the feeling in his legs.
Hawkins, ever the warrior, stumbled on for another few hundred metres before an inevitable withdrawal, ensuring he will forever be included in reels of the most dramatic marathon moments.
Hawkins is made of tough stuff, however, and the next year he returned stronger than ever when he secured yet another World Championship fourth-place finish.
But it was then that Hawkins’ issues really began. Injury after injury has plagued him ever since.
He made it to the start-line of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics but, having had his build up severely disrupted by an ankle injury, he was forced to withdraw mid-race.
Surgery to rectify the problem was successful but what followed was the stuff of nightmares for any athlete. A stress fracture of his femur wrote off much of 2022, while 2023 included a hamstring tear and another stress fracture, this time in his pelvis.
But finally, after what must seem like a never-ending spell on the sidelines, Hawkins is back.
Today, he will be on the start line of the London Marathon for what will be his first outing over
26.2 miles since the Tokyo Olympics nearly three years ago.
There will be few more heartening sights than witnessing Hawkins line up in London, and, even more significantly, and assuming all goes to plan, crossing the finish line of a marathon, something he has not done since those World Championships in Doha in 2019.
We all know that sport isn’t fair, particularly so in elite sport, but my goodness, the past few years have been especially unkind to Hawkins. So, if anyone deserves a slice of good fortune over the coming months as he mounts his competitive comeback, it’s him.
Hawkins was, and, I hope, still is, a once-in-a-generation talent. The enormity of a Scot to be challenging for marathon medals at the World Championships not once, but twice, cannot be overstated.
In an event that has been dominated by Africans, the number of Europeans who have made any mark are few and far between. To be competing against, and beating, so many of the world’s best marathon runners at major global championships is indescribably hard yet, in his injury-free prime, Hawkins did it year after year.
It was not a lack of talent that robbed him of the chance to continue racing for medals; it was his bad luck with injuries.
Of all the reasons for an absence of sporting success, this is the hardest one to deal with.
I spoke to Hawkins in these pages last month and he revealed that hanging up his trainers had never crossed his mind.
This seems a remarkable claim considering most would have thrown in the towel years ago had they been faced with such challenges. But perhaps it’s this rare attitude that has allowed him to go where no Scottish man has gone before in the marathon.
Which is why I’ll be watching out for Hawkins today and as the year goes on and he continues his comeback. The Renfrewshire native deserves a run of fitness to see if he can, as he believes, return to where he was previously on the world stage or, even surpass it.
Doing so will require a monumental effort and would be one of the great achievements in recent Scottish sporting history.
Only time will tell if it’s a feasible goal.
But there’s surely few, if any, who will be following Hawkins’ comeback both today and in the coming months and not be hoping that he is indeed able to get at least close to the heights he has already scaled.
Hawkins was, and, I hope, still is, a oncein-a-generation talent. The enormity of a Scot to be challenging for marathon medals at the World Championships not once, but twice, cannot be overstated