Andreas Almgren reveals the doubts behind his dream New York Marathon debut

When Andreas Almgren watched the New York City Marathon last year, he made his way to three different points on the course to take in the action.

By that evening, the Swedish runner had seen enough. He messaged his manager to say he wanted to race it himself in 2026.

The response was a question: “Are you sure?”

A year later, Almgren had his answer, winning on his marathon debut in 2:06:01 after a devastating late surge took him clear of Italy’s Yeman Crippa.

But behind that assured finish was an athlete who once doubted he would ever reach world class – and who, even with 10km remaining on Sunday, was still trying to work out how a marathon was supposed to feel.

From spectator to champion

Almgren’s choice of New York had been one of the intriguing aspects of his debut.

This was a chance to test his racing instincts on a demanding course, with the emphasis on beating the opposition rather than chasing the clock. And his explanation afterwards underlined why that appealed.

“I didn’t really look at my watch or the time or try to calculate a finishing time or anything,” he said at the post-race press conference.

“I just tried to stay up in the front then see what happened, just tried to see how the race developed basically.”

He added: “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 would have been nice to have a 2:05 time, but I’m very happy about the win.”

The idea had taken hold during his visit the previous year, when he watched in Brooklyn, on First Avenue and in Central Park.

“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’m probably not going to reach world class’

That ambition would have seemed a distant prospect during the most difficult years of Almgren’s career.

Then an 800m runner, he suffered a major stress fracture in his navicular bone in 2016 and underwent surgery. His attempted return in 2017 did not go as hoped, before another injury ruined his 2018 season.

“I just had bad race after bad race after bad race,” he recalled.

“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.”

His belief developed gradually as his career moved towards longer distances.

“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.”

Even the decision to enter New York came well before the conviction that he could win it.

“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.”

Learning the marathon on the move

For all his ability over shorter distances, Almgren arrived at the start line with questions still to answer.

Until September, he had never run further than 32km. His preparation had offered encouragement, particularly in how well he handled demanding long runs and recovered from them, but racing beyond that distance remained an unknown.

And at around 32km on Sunday, he was hardly feeling like a certain winner.

“This is my first marathon. I don’t really know how it’s supposed to feel at those different points,” he explained.

“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 speed of that change surprised him.

“Then when the pace started to pick up again, I just felt fresh again suddenly.”

There was also the noise. Almgren had studied the course and experienced the race as a spectator, but running through it brought a different appreciation.

“You know there’s going to be this huge atmosphere here, but it still kind of surprised me all the noise,” he said.

“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.”

The gap that changed everything

As the contenders were whittled down, Almgren’s intention was to keep responding to his rivals rather than launch an attack himself.

Eventually, only Crippa remained alongside him. The Italian knew the threat posed by Almgren’s finishing speed and tried to force the issue.

“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,” Crippa admitted.

Almgren had planned to wait until they re-entered Central Park before making his move. Then, on 59th Street, he spotted an opportunity.

“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.”

That was his cue to commit.

“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.”

By the time he returned to the park, Almgren believed he had made the decisive move. Crippa would finish 13 seconds behind him, with Lesotho’s Kamohelo Mofolo completing the podium in 2:06:26 on his 21st birthday.

For the debutant out front, there was finally a chance to savour the race he had watched from the sidelines a year earlier.

“Just try to enjoy the last few hundred meters,” he told himself, “even though it was very hard.”