CITIUS MAG

🇺🇸 CITIUS MAG's Too Early U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials Power Rankings will be released in tomorrow morning's @TheLapCount Newsletter. 📊 ► Subscribe here to get it in your inbox: thelapcount.substack.com/ We will also release a podcast episode explaining our rankings with a special crossover with @ThePapaLinks of The Out & Back Podcast. 🎙️ Available on The CITIUS MAG Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and The CITIUS MAG YouTube channel tomorrow.

The LA28 Olympic standards are out, and making the Games has never been harder. But it’s not because of the times 👀

FINALISTS NAMED FOR WORLD ATHLETE OF THE YEAR 🌎 World Athletics has announced its three finalists for Male Athlete of the Year, selected from a list of ten nominees using a combination of fan, athlete, and media voting. 🇧🇷 Alison dos Santos: 400m hurdles world record, World Ultimate champion, and Diamond League final winner. 🇸🇪 Mondo Duplantis: pole vault world record, World Indoor, and World Ultimate champion. 🇰🇪 Sabastian Sawe: London Marathon champion in a world-record 1:59:30, the first record-eligible sub-two-hour marathon in history. The winner will be announced on November 29th at World Athletics’s annual award ceremony in Monaco. Who’s your pick?? 🤔

🔴 Jake Heyward On Haglund's Surgery, Self-Coaching, And His Incredible 2026 Comeback youtu.be/1LiYKXwgzK4?si=f2GC…

What a difference four years can make 👀 Olympic qualifying standards got significantly faster across the board in the distance events between the Paris and Los Angeles Games. These shifts are partially due to a changing qualification system that puts an emphasized importance on qualifying through world rankings rather than the standard, but it also boils down to people just getting significantly faster. Athletes that got under the 2024 standard this year vs. the 2028 standard: - Men’s 800m: 72 under 1:44.70, 10 under 1:43.00 - Women’s 800m: 69 under 1:59.30, 12 under 1:57.00 - Men’s 1500m: 70 under 3:33.50, 5 under 3:30.00 - Women’s 1500m: 51 under 4:02.50, 13 under 3:57.50 - Men’s 3000mSC: 27 under 8:15.00, 9 under 8:07.50 - Women’s 3000mSC: 32 under 9:23.00, 8 under 9:06.00 - Men’s 5000m: 41 under 13:05.00, 10 under 12:50.00 - Women’s 5000m: 47 under 14:52.00, 14 under 14:34.00 - Men’s 10,000m: 2 under 27:00.00, 0 under 26:48.00 - Women’s 10,000m: 4 under 30:40.00, 1 under 30:30.00 - Men’s Marathon: 236 under 2:08:10, 46 under 2:05:00 - Women’s Marathon: 222 under 2:26:50, 75 under 2:22:20 For the marathon, finishing inside the Top 5 at a Platinum Label race serves as a qualifying performance, regardless of the time. World Athletics expects 40% of the field to be filled by athletes that achieve the standard, with the other 60% determined by world rankings.

2028 LOS ANGELES OLYMPIC QUALIFYING STANDARDS HAVE ARRIVED! 🇺🇸 World Athletics has announced the qualification system for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympic Games. The framework features the same anticipated qualification split of 40% of athletes by standard and 60% by world rankings that we’ll see for next year’s World Championships in Beijing. The qualification windows are as follows: - Marathon: Nov. 1, 2026 - Apr. 30, 2028 - 10,000m, Combined Events, Race Walk and Relays: Dec. 19, 2026 - June 18, 2028 - All other events: June 19, 2027 - June 18, 2028 Two important qualification caveats for the marathon specifically: - Finishing inside the Top 5 at a Platinum Label race counts as a qualifying performance, regardless of time. - Federations can reallocate a position in the quota to an unqualified athlete of their choosing that has run faster than 2:11:00 for men or 2:29:00 for women. Qualifying spots in the relays will largely be determined by the 2028 World Relays, held in The Bahamas that April. For the Olympics, there are no pathways to qualification through wild cards in the same way there are for World Championships.

What can’t he win⁉️ Habtom Samuel 🇪🇷 wins his fourth straight road race since turning pro at the 2026 Boston Half, taking control in the back half of the rolling course to claim the victory in 59:49 and knock 45 seconds off Lelisa Desisa’s course record from 2013. Since August, Samuel has claimed wins all over the U.S. circuit: Beach to Beacon, Falmouth, the Abbott Dash to the Finish 5k, and now the Boston Half.

Taking over the U.S. ✈️ If Fentaye Belayneh’s 🇪🇹 goal is to win a race in all 50 states, she’s off to a great start as the 26-year-old Ethiopian kicks well to beat runner-up Winfred Mbithe 🇰🇪 to the finish line at the Boston Half by two seconds, running 69:14 for the win. In between track races all season, Belayneh has also now won the Houston Half and finished fifth at the NYC Half in three trips to the U.S. this year.

The field in St. Louis just got a whole lot bigger! 💥 14 women got under the 2:37 Olympic Trials Qualifying standard this morning in Indianapolis at the Indy Monumental Marathon, with 11 of them doing so for the first time this cycle. Your qualifiers: - Lindsey Bradley - Isabel Hebner - Melissa Berry - Erin Del Giudice - Maeve Pierson - Bridget Belyeu - Cheyenne Moore - Caitlin Klopfer - Becca Richtman - Adelyn Fairley - Sadie James - Olivia Ballew - Claire Krummenacher - Ashton Swinford Congrats everyone!

A MONUMENTAL day for knocking out an OTQ 🙌 14 men achieved the Olympic Trials Qualifying time of 2:16:00 on the streets of Indianapolis this morning the Indy Monumental Marathon, with 12 of them doing so for the first time this cycle. Your qualifiers: - Johnnie Guy - Cameron Dickson - Kobe Blanco - Braden Nicholson - Tanner Chads - Robert Pedersen - Hudson Hurst - Eric Vazquez-Olivas - Curtis Eckstein - Zane Chalker - Ian Mcvey - Dylan Parker - Matt Rand - Tom Brady Congrats guys! 👏

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"I have seen tributes and comments from countless people who have a story about Frank Gagliano. And my favorite part? Pretty much none of them are really about running. They are about small acts of kindness. Like the time he gave his Big East Coach of the Year award to a coach whose team had improved from 10th to second in one year. Or about how he would be out in the rain watching the seventh heat of an 800 meter race because one of his guys was in there. T hey are about Gag taking a chance on you, and then making you feel like you were the only runner he cared about even though you knew he was doing the same for countless other athletes." We All Deserve A Coach Like Frank Gagliano 👇 citiusmag.com/articles/frank…

Correction: An earlier post misidentified the athlete provisionally suspended by the Anti-Doping Agency of Kenya. The agency’s website lists the athlete as Noah Kibet. @RunEmilyERun reports that the athlete is actually Noah Kibet Cherokony. The previous post incorrectly identified the suspended athlete as the 2022 World Indoor 800m silver medalist.

Kenyan 400m national record holder 🇰🇪 Mercy Adongo Oketch has been provisionally suspended by the Anti-Doping Agency of Kenya after testing positive for two banned substances: trimetazidine, (a metabolic modulator) and furosemide (a diuretic). First reported by @MichKatami and confirmed by the ADAK Provisionally Suspended Athletes database. TMZ is a banned heart medication prohibited by the World Anti-Doping Agency at all times because it can improve endurance and blood flow efficiency. This is the same drug that Lawrence Cherono, a former winner of the Boston and Chicago marathons, was banned for. In 2025, Oketch ran her national record of 50.14 in front of a home crowd at the Kip Keino Classic in Nairobi. She went on to reach the semifinals at the World Championships in Tokyo. In 2026, she ran a Kenyan indoor 400m national record of 51.25 when she finished 5th at the World Indoor Championships. She was also part of Kenya's mixed 4x400m relay team that finished 4th at the Commonwealth Games.

You Should Run A Marathon With All Your Friends 👯 "While so many of our think-pieces focus on how to get the middle of the pack to care about the front, I have not personally thought enough about how to get the front of the race to appreciate the middle. Over the past five years, the depth of marathoning has exploded. But all that has really been made possible because of the commercial explosion led by the everyday marathoner—the ones who are hitting the 'Power Up' signs in Queens, and eating free pickles in the Bronx. Because of that, it has become financially possible for more races to offer more incentives for the really cool stuff up front to happen." 📫 Read more via @TheLapCount: thelapcount.substack.com/i/2…

Edna Kiplagat Is An All-Time Classic 🎶 "Edna Kiplagat’s doing the same things at 46 she was doing at 30, and is far surpassing her output from her 20s: showing up at (typically hilly, non-rabbitted) globally competitive marathons and holding her own. Particularly in an era where it can feel like every great marathoner is one doping bust away from falling from grace, it’s worth taking a little extra time to celebrate those like Kiplagat who have been really good for a really long time, doing it (seemingly) the right way and making both her home country and adopted home state proud for literal decades." 📫 Read more via @TheLapCount: thelapcount.substack.com/i/2…

Team USA Understands The Assignment 🗽 "The results from New York made the goal clear: Team USA can deliver two or more marathon medals at their home Olympics. The gap has shrunk between the best marathoners in the country and the best marathoners in the world, and the domestic competition has created a rising tide that’s lifted all boats." 📫 Read more via @TheLapCount: thelapcount.substack.com/i/2…

🗣️ “Anytime I had an uphill, I was like, ‘Thank God’… The last mile, I felt really, really good, so I tried to just crank down and enjoy the moment.” Jess McClain flexed her prowess in tackling hills yesterday in the closing miles of the New York City Marathon. On the strength of a 64-second close from Mile 26 to the finish, McClain ran down defending champion Hellen Obiri and finished second. 🎥 FULL PRESS CONFERENCE: youtu.be/jnvs8sX1gDU?is=LAn0…

🗣️ “I thought I had a shot of winning this, but I didn’t want to make any moves myself.” It may have been his first marathon, but Andreas Almgren looked like anything but a rookie en route to his victory at yesterday’s New York City Marathon. The Swedish star covered the final 1.2 miles in 5:21, opening a 13-second gap over eventual runner-up Yeman Crippa. 🎥 FULL PRESS CONFERENCE: youtu.be/0m680Z16XhE?is=-bnF…

🗣️ “It’s just pain, it’s just pain. I was repeating that in my head… This is your moment.” Zouhair Talbi was digging deep in the final stages of yesterday’s New York City Marathon, and his effort was rewarded with a sixth-place finish in 2:06:43. His time is the best ever by an American man in New York, and he was just 42 seconds off Andreas Almgren’s winning time. 🎥 FULL PRESS CONFERENCE: youtu.be/fOi1-bwuS28?is=3zk4…