Sunday’s 41st Los Angeles Marathon ended in a finish so close, so improbable, that the crowd barely knew what to make of it.
After 26.2 miles winding from Dodger Stadium through Hollywood, Beverly Hills, and down to Century City, the men’s race came down to one single stride – and the man who found that last reserve of energy was a substitute teacher and high school cross-country coach from Jackson, Michigan.
Nathan Martin, 36, crossed the finish line in 2 hours, 11 minutes, and 16 seconds to claim the closest win in the event’s history, edging Kenya’s Michael Kimani Kamau by less than one second, one hundredth of a second, to be exact, per AP News.
The two men shared the same official finishing time.
Kamau had controlled the race from early on, pulling away from the field around Mile 10 and building a lead of more than a minute. He looked like a man about to cruise to a comfortable win. Martin, who trailed the entire race, refused to give up.
“I always challenge myself to push, regardless of whether there’s somebody to chase or I’m all by myself,” Martin told reporter John W. Davis after the race. “I know I can always do that. You can’t always win, but you can always push.”
With less than a mile to go, Martin spotted Kamau and the lead pace car in the distance and made his move. By the finish, he had run Kamau down stride for stride — and then Kamau collapsed exactly at the finish line, taken away on a stretcher after reportedly skipping fluids throughout the race. It was a dramatic ending to what had been another dominant Kenyan performance.
For Martin, the victory adds another remarkable chapter to an already unlikely story. He is not a full-time athlete — he splits his time between substituting at school and coaching the cross-country team at Jackson High.
Yet, Martin holds the record as the fastest U.S.-born Black marathoner in history, set at the 2023 Grandma’s Marathon in Duluth with a personal best of 2:10:45. He’s a three-time U.S. Olympic Trials qualifier. And now, he’s a back-to-back American champion at the LA Marathon, after fellow American Matthew Richtman won the title in 2025.
“Never give up,” Martin added.
The women’s race was a different story — a masterclass from 45-year-old Kenyan Priscah Cherono, who crossed the finish line first overall to claim both the women’s title and the $10,000 Marathon Chase bonus in an unofficial time of 2:25:18. Cherono, a mother of three who now lives in Colorado Springs, represented Kenya in the 5,000 meters at the 2008 Beijing Olympics and has defied every expectation of what an elite distance runner’s career arc or career timeline should look like. She won in only the second professional marathon of her life, according to RunningUsa.
An impressive feat to say the least, considering that the LA Sports Council reported that more than 27,000 runners from all 50 states – and even 63 countries – took part in the event.
When Marathons Go Wild: Other Unforgettable Finishes
Sunday’s LA finish joins a short list of marathon moments that defy belief.
At the 2004 Athens Olympics, Brazil’s Vanderlei de Lima was leading the marathon and looked to be locked in for gold when he was shoved by a nearby spectator (an Irish priest oddly enough) in the final miles, per Running Magazine, disrupting his rhythm and allowing him to be passed twice before finishing third – he later received the Pierre de Coubertin medal for his sportsmanship.
Other odd moments in running history include Stephen Kiprotich’s zig-zag maneuver to fend off Lelisa Desisa in the closing kilometers of the 2013 world championship marathon, Josephat Machuka punching Haile Gebrselassie in the back of the head during the final straight of the 1992 world junior 10,000m, and Paula Radcliffe briefly stopping to relieve herself en route to winning the 2005 London Marathon.
Distance running has a long history of crazy moments, heartbreak, heroics, and photo finishes.
