TCS NYC MARATHON

November 1, 2026

Andreas Almgren

Yeman Crippa

Kamohelo Mofolo

Press Conference

THE MODERATOR: Our podium for the Men's Division.

In third place from Lesotho with a time of 2:06:26, Kamohelo Mofolo. It's also Kamohelo's birthday today, turning 21 years old.

From Italy in second place with a time of 2:06:14, Yeman Crippa.

And your 2026 TCS New York City Marathon champion with a time of 2:06:01 from Sweden, Andreas Almgren.

Congratulations, gentlemen. Andreas, I want to start with you. You are a pretty good 5,000 meter and 10,000 meter runner. As you're watching this race unfold with 27 guys in the lead pack, are you thinking, this is playing right into my hands?

ANDREAS ALMGREN: Kind of but not really. This is my first marathon. I don't really know how it's supposed to feel at those different points. So like at 32K, I'm like I'm tired. Why are my legs feeling like this? I thought I was supposed to feel a lot better. Then with 5K left, I started feeling like it's pretty easy to respond now to the moves.

So somewhere around there, I felt like, okay, this might be my day actually.

THE MODERATOR: When you made that decisive move coming back into the park, did you know you had it put away, or were you just kind of hanging on and hoping?

ANDREAS ALMGREN: I just kind of felt like I have a shot of winning this, but I don't want to make any moves myself. I'm just going to respond to everything. At first it was Benson who started doing the moves when we went into the park. Yeman started doing some moves as well. Suddenly it was just us two left.

Then we were out on 59th Street, I started noticing I started getting a little bit of a gap, and I put in extra here to see if I could extend it. Then when we came into the park again, it just felt like, okay, I have probably done the decisive move now. Just try to enjoy the last few hundred meters, even though it was very hard.

THE MODERATOR: Yeman, very similar background as Andreas, 5,000 meter, 10,000 meter guy on the track. How did the strategy of the race and the fact that no one was really taking it out play into your hands? And did that help you finish where you ultimately finished today?

YEMAN CRIPPA: Hello to everyone. It was an amazing race. It was my first major marathon. Especially here in New York, it was very, very nice. I'm happy with my result, how I run, yeah, and happy to share the podium with Andreas, with this guy, yeah, I'm happy.

It's a very nice day for me, for my team, for family. That's it.

THE MODERATOR: Kamohelo, happy birthday.

KAMOHELO MOFOLO: Thank you.

THE MODERATOR: You've taken to this marathon pretty well. You also took the lead at a certain point, I think it was around 20 miles you took the lead. You've had such success in just two marathons at such a young age. Is this a natural fit for you?

KAMOHELO MOFOLO: I'm feeling so happy to be here in position number 3. I'm feeling so happy because it's my first time running here in New York. I feel so happy.

THE MODERATOR: How were the crowds there today for you? Did that make you run faster?

KAMOHELO MOFOLO: Yes.

THE MODERATOR: Lots of adrenaline.

Q. Yeman, you told us before that you wanted to be on the podium right before this run, and now you did it. What about New York?

YEMAN CRIPPA: Very special race. I never felt alone, and I'm honored to be with you. I never felt alone throughout with the New York City support.

Q. Andreas, when I interviewed you on Friday, you said you're going to run at the front as long as you could and lead as long as you could. What surprised you about the race?

ANDREAS ALMGREN: It's kind of like how many different emotions you get during a marathon. You get a lot of ups and downs. Like I said, I thought I was supposed to feel a bit fresher with 10K left, but I started to feel a bit fatigued. I just noticed that we were such a huge group left. Usually there's just a little bit of a front group at that stage here in NYC.

Then when the pace started to pick up again, I just felt fresh again suddenly. It kind of surprised me how fast those different kind of feelings we could get during a marathon.

I think I studied the course and everything quite well before. The thing is you know there's going to be this huge atmosphere here, but it still kind of surprised me all the noise, like when you come here into First Avenue, when you're out in Brooklyn, Bronx, it's just deafening around it. It's such an amazing experience to race here.

Q. Congratulations, Andreas. When you were deciding on running a first marathon, I'm sure everybody on your team had an opinion. Why did you want New York? And now what was it about New York that worked so well for you today that allowed you to win in your debut?

ANDREAS ALMGREN: I was actually here during my off-season last year and watched this race. On the night of that race, I just texted my manager like I want to do this next year. I got the response, are you sure?

Then I started like telling her about my plans, long-term plans and everything. At least in my mind I felt that it was a good plan, and here we are a year later and I won this race.

I kind of forgot what was the second part of that question. Didn't you have two questions?

THE MODERATOR: You pretty much answered. Wanted to make sure you were still comfortable with that decision, and would you do it again the same way. I think you pretty much said you would.

Kamohelo, I want to ask you, do you train here in the United States?

KAMOHELO MOFOLO: No, Lesotho.

THE MODERATOR: Can you tell us about your training setup and how you prepared for the conditions today on the course?

KAMOHELO MOFOLO: My training, it was good for today, yeah.

Q. Andreas, where did you watch the race last year, the finish line or somewhere else?

ANDREAS ALMGREN: I was at three spots. So I was at mile 8 out in Brooklyn. I was at mile -- somewhere between mile 16 or 17 on First Avenue, and then I went to Central Park, like Central Park East somewhere. I tried to get it in three different parts.

Q. This was, I think, the fastest race with seven guys in the top 10 overall. Did you know it was going to be such a fast race for all three of you as it was developing, or was it just people running and there are enough guys up front to push the pace the entire time?

ANDREAS ALMGREN: Yeah, I didn't really look at my watch or the time or try to calculate a finishing time or anything. I just tried to stay up in the front then see what happened, just tried to see how the race developed basically.

I didn't think it was going to be that quick of a finish. I didn't really know that we would run that fast. It's like that's one of the reasons why I choose to race New York. It's like you don't really care about the time, it's all about trying to get as good a position as possible, and I wanted to be in it and try to win it.

It was -- it would have been nice to have a 2:05 time, but I'm very happy about the win.

Q. Andreas, early in your career, you had a lot of injuries, setbacks. You had to miss a lot of major championships. It hasn't been an easy road to get here. I'm curious what was the lowest point on that journey, and when did you start to think something like this was really possible?

ANDREAS ALMGREN: My lowest point was when I was an 800 meter runner. I think it was back in like 2018. Back in 2016 I had a big stress fracture in my navicular bone. Had a surgery, tried to come back into good shape in 2017, and it didn't really work. In 2018 I had another injury that ruined that season.

I just had bad race after bad race after bad race. At that point, I was like, yeah, I'm probably not going to reach world class, but I hope that I can make a Swedish team again at least. I'd say it wasn't until like 2024 or something where I really started to think that I could be one of the best runners, and then just gradually gone from there.

I think that you should have hard but reachable goals. So it wasn't until like when I actually was in this marathon build that I actually started believing that I could win this.

When I decided I wanted to race here like a year ago, it was just because I thought that I might have a marathon future, not that I thought I was going to win this thing a year later.

Q. Andreas, great job today. You've talked extensively before about fueling and the science that goes into fueling for you in a training bout. You obviously have never had to fuel for a marathon before. Is there anything you can tell us that you learned about yourself when trying to fuel for the marathon, and were there any surprises in terms of how much intake you took, or is there any insight into that?

ANDREAS ALMGREN: I knew before this build that I can handle a lot of mileage and everything, but it was still quite an uncertainty on how I would react to the long runs, the hard long runs, because I -- up until September, I'd never run longer than 32K. But it surprised me on how well I could handle that and how fast I can recover from those quite hard long runs.

It was still an uncertainty just standing here on the start line because I had never run, I'd say, more than 32K really hard. Then you add another 10K on that. So that was just the biggest uncertainty.

From that, I had a very high mileage. I had the fuel plan dialed in and everything. I was mostly just excited to race here.

Q. The question is for Andreas, Yeman, and the third. What did you have for breakfast this morning?

ANDREAS ALMGREN: I had white bread with jam and some rice and coffee.

YEMAN CRIPPA: For me was five, six pieces of bread, white bread, with jam and tea, and that's enough.

KAMOHELO MOFOLO: For me it was four slices of white bread and tea, and that's it.

Q. Yeman, congratulations again. On Friday when we talked to you, you said that within a couple of hours of finishing in Paris, you decided to run here. Do you think you made a good decision now?

YEMAN CRIPPA: Yeah, I'm happy. Like Paris marathon, I knew that New York the level was very, very high, different from Paris. Yes, also the result was very high. So I'm happy, yes. I need to continue like this.

Q. Yeman, when you and Andreas were close at the end, I couldn't tell which one of you was going to sprint first. How did you decide when you were going to try to move?

YEMAN CRIPPA: Yeah, I know Andreas come from track like me, but he's very, very strong. He has also a very strong sprint. When I'm with Andreas the last 3K, yes, I did my best to push, but the energy was going to finish, and Andreas was the best one.

Q. Andreas, when you decided to move, how were you feeling? Did you know you had like one last push?

ANDREAS ALMGREN: So we were out there on 59th Street, and I knew that Yeman was behind me. I didn't really felt that I was pushing, but then I saw I got like 1 1/2 meter gap maybe, then I felt like I'll try to put in another gear and we'll see what happens. Then I saw that the gap started to grow.

So then I just felt like, okay, I'll try to make this the decisive move basically. I was planning to wait until we entered Central Park again, but it's kind of like when you start to feel it, you get that little bit of the sensation of getting a gap, then you sometimes just try to go for it, and it worked, I guess.

Q. This is for all you guys. Can you talk about the shoes that you wore today?

ANDREAS ALMGREN: I wore this, the Nike Apex. I've been training a lot in them. It felt like the best option, and I'm not very disappointed in my choice to race in them.

YEMAN CRIPPA: This is the LS Strike 2 from On. I love it. This is for road race. I'm very comfortable with this one.

KAMOHELO MOFOLO: I have no idea. I don't know any.

THE MODERATOR: Three different countries, three different shoes on our podium today. I haven't gone back and checked officially, but I'm pretty sure this is the first time in TCS New York City Marathon history that Sweden, Italy, and Lesotho were our podium. You can check me, but I'm pretty sure that's the case.

Congratulations to our top three men.

As our second and third place finishers exit the stage, I want to welcome back to the stage Ryan Cooney, the Vice President of Marketing for TAG Heuer to present today's champion with a watch.