HONOLULU — The elites are back.

The 51st Honolulu Marathon takes place Sunday morning with 10 professional runners — six men and four women — leading the pack from Ala Moana Boulevard, out to Hawaii Kai and back to Kapiolani Park.

It has taken a few years for the event to recover from its 2020 cancellation at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, but it is just about fully back, David Monti, the Honolulu Marathon’s race media consultant, told Spectrum News.

“It’s the first year since 2019 that the race has had a proper elite athlete program,” Monti said this week.

On the men’s elite side, there are two asylum-seekers from Eritrea (Filmon Ande and Tsegay Weldibanos), three experienced Kenyans (Reuben Kiprop Kerio, Paul Lonyangata and Dickson Chumba) and an up-and-coming Ethiopian (Abayneh Degu). They range in age from 25 to 37. None have won Honolulu before.

“I’ll be honest, I think any of these guys can get on the podium here,” Monti said.

On the women’s side, four athletes — one Kenyan (Cynthia Limo), two Ethiopians (Sintayehu Tilahun Getahun and Kasu Bitew Lemeneh) and one Japanese (Yukari Abe) — are expected to vie for the title.

The race begins at 5 a.m. Some 29,000 were entered this year between Saturday’s Kalakaua Merrie Mile, the Start to Park 10K and the 26.2-mile main event. That’s the fourth-largest in the U.S. this year, according to Monti.

Japanese participation — always a significant component of the event — is still well below the 17,000 entrants of fields pre-pandemic but is back up to about 9,000 this year, close to double 2022's showing.

Getting a full complement of elite runners back in the mix has been a multi-year process. After the 2020 race was canceled, the 2021 edition had a minimal budget for the pros and only in 2022 did the Honolulu Marathon offer a $25,000 prize for the men’s and women’s winners.

This year, the winners get the $25K, plus a new addition: a solid gold medal worth another $15,000. The medals were on display in glass cases at the Honolulu Marathon Expo at the Hawaii Convention Center this weekend.

“We’ve done a slow build-back since COVID and both our men’s and women’s fields are deeper and faster,” Honolulu Marathon Association President Jim Barahal told Race Results Weekly ahead of Sunday.

Conditions are expected to be clear.

“It should be about as good as we get it here,” Monti said. “The big thing here is the wind. … Some years it’s so windy. … Honolulu’s course is right there with New York’s for difficulty.”

Chumba, 37, who has run 22 marathons since 2010, will be the pacemaker. He told Monti that he will decide at the 25-kilometer mark (15.5 miles) whether he will finish the race.

The Eritrean asylum-seekers, Ande, 25, and Weldibanos, 27, have trained in Flagstaff, Ariz., under James McKirdy. Neither has run Honolulu before.

Lonyantaga, 30, boasts two Paris Marathon titles as well as the Shanghai and Taipei Marathons in 2019 and 2020. He is another Honolulu first-timer.

In contrast, Kerio, 29, has run Honolulu five times before with a runner-up performance in 2018.

Degu, a 25-year-old Ethiopian, has the fastest personal best of any runner with a 2:04:53 at Paris in 2021, when he was fifth.

On the women’s side, all four elites are Honolulu first-timers. The 33-year-old Limo of Kenya has the sympathetic case for victory — albeit in her first-ever marathon. The half-marathon runner’s longtime agent died during her training process and she has readied for Sunday with a heavy heart, Monti said.  

But the two 24-year-old Ethiopian women, Getahun and Lemeneh, could be the co-favorites. The two rising stars on the marathon circuit have trained and lived together.

“I expect one of them to be first or second,” Monti said.

Lastly, Abe, 34, is coming off a 10^th-place showing in Japan’s Olympic marathon trials in October.

“I think she’s here to beat away some demons from that day, because she missed her last chance to make an Olympic team,” Monti said.

Ethiopia’s Asefa Mengstu won the 2022 Honolulu Marathon in 2:14:40, nearly seven minutes off the course record set in 2019 by Kenya’s Titus Ekiru. The women’s champion Asayech Ayalew Bere of Ethiopia, won in 2:30:58, more than eight minutes off the record of Kenya’s Brigid Kosgei from 2017.

Brian McInnis covers the state's sports scene for Spectrum News Hawaii. He can be reached at brian.mcinnis@charter.com.