Can Obiri claim the series crown?

Hellen Obiri can cap a stellar year if she can carry off the 2024 TCS New York City Marathon title.
 
If she does, she will also take home the title of 2024 Abbott World Marathon Majors series champion, overtaking the current leader Sutume Kebede.
 
The 34-year-old Kenyan battled to victory here in 2023 as she outlasted Letesenbet Gidey up the grueling final slope of the course in Central Park.
 
She then pocketed her second straight Boston Marathon title in April before claiming Olympic marathon bronze on that hot, hilly morning in Paris.
 
Her Boston/New York double in 2023 was the first of its kind in over three decades, and she now stands on the brink of doing it again.
 
Kebede is not running on Sunday, but Obiri’s fellow Kenyan marathon teammate Sharon Lokedi is.
 
Lokedi won here in 2022 and was fourth in Paris. She can enter the fight for the series title with victory here but would need Obiri to have an uncharacteristically bad morning.
 
Completing a trio of Kenyan New York champions on the starting line is the evergreen Edna Kiplagat. The 44-year-old won here 14 years ago and has won the series three times in a glittering career.
 
She can still propel herself into the prize money places for the series if she can roll back the years on Sunday.
 
Looking to join them is New York debutant Sheila Chepkirui. The 33-year-old ran 2:17:29 in Valencia in 2022 and was second in Berlin in 2023 before finishing sixth in a highly stacked London field in April.
 
Winning in New York at the first time of asking is a tall order, but it has been done before in recent years by the likes of Joyciline Jepkosgei and Lokedi, the latter having never run any marathon before taking the tape in 2022.
 
Another athlete with a highlight-reel career behind her is Ethiopia’s Tirunesh Dibaba. The Ethiopian is a five-time world champion and three-time Olympic champion on the track, but the marathon has not been an altogether happy hunting ground for the now 39-year-old.
 
Her marathon PB dates back to London 2017, and she was champion in Chicago later that year, but there have been no more victories since then for Dibaba.
 
Her countrywoman Senebre Teferi is 10 years Dibaba’s junior, and has strung together back to back wins in the Mastercard New York Mini 10k in 2022 and 2023 as well as the United Airlines NYC Half in 2022. She failed to finish in the soupy conditions of the 2022 race, so will have unfinished business on her mind.
 
Obiri is clearly a class act in the challenging environments provided by Boston and New York, and proved it again in that brutal Paris race this summer.

She has plenty to gain from doing theBoston/New York double-double, but there is no shortage of rivals ready to make it far from easy.