Crippa ends 24-year European drought with historic Paris Marathon win

In a landmark performance for Italian distance running, Yeman Crippa stormed to victory at the Paris Marathon on Sunday, covering the 42.195-kilometre course in a personal-best 2 hours 5 minutes 18 seconds. The 29-year-old’s triumph under the Arc de Triomphe carried a weight not merely national but continental: no European man had won the French capital’s race since local favourite Benoît Zwierzchiewski in 2002, and no Italian had ever placed first in the event’s history.

Crippa, who was born in Ethiopia and competes for the Fiamme Oro sports group, executed a tactically flawless race. Italian dispatches emphasised the maturity of a negative split on a route that last year hosted the Olympic marathon, as well as the decisive moment—a sharp acceleration on a cobbled, gently descending section barely 1,500 metres from the finish. That surge dispatched the East African favourites: Ethiopian Bayelign Teshager was left two seconds adrift in 2:05:23, Kenyan Sila Kiptoo crossed in 2:05:28, and Djibouti’s Mohamed Ismail in 2:05:38. The time, beaten only by Iliaas Aouani’s Italian record of 2:04:26 from Tokyo, lopped nearly a minute off Crippa’s previous best set in Seville last year.

Viewed from Switzerland, where coverage of the Zurich Marathon dominated the domestic athletics agenda, the Paris result offered a complementary European narrative. Orienteering world champion Matthias Kyburz, an eight-time gold medallist in his own sport, finished 13th in Paris as the fifth-best European—a solid, if overshadowed, performance that underscored the depth of non-African challengers emerging on the marathon circuit. Meanwhile, the Italian camp read the victory as a vindication of Crippa’s decision to commit fully to the marathon distance after an underwhelming Olympic Games in 2024.

Crippa himself framed the day as a fresh beginning. “My career as a marathoner starts today,” he said, expressing relief at having finally found the right path. That sense of renewal will likely resonate among European marathon watchers who have long awaited a credible heir to the continent’s fading endurance tradition. With the Paris victory, Crippa has not only etched his name into the record books but also staked a claim as a serious contender at the world’s major city races—transforming a single historic afternoon into a platform for the years ahead.