The first six athletes on Team USA for the 2028 Olympics will be determined in St. Louis.
The city will host the U.S. Olympic marathon trials for both men and women on March 25, 2028, USA Track & Field announced Thursday. It was selected over Phoenix.
Three men and three women will qualify for Team USA during the trials, which will be the first selection event for any U.S. sport ahead of the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles, according to organizers.
The full course of the 26.2-mile race, which NBC will broadcast, will be released in the coming months. Members of the local organizing committee said that the race will begin at Washington University’s Francis Olympic Field, the main venue used during the 1904 Olympics, and that it will include several loops of downtown before it finishes in Energizer Park, the home of the city’s MLS team.
St. Louis hosted the Olympic trials for the women’s marathon in 2004. It also hosted the trials that determined the U.S. figure skating team for the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics.
“As America’s first Olympic city that hosted the 1904 Games, that Olympic legacy is really important to us,” said Marc Schreiber, president of the St. Louis Sports Commission.
Running is undergoing a boom in popularity, and professionals are breaking records. Kenya’s Sebastian Sawe became the first person to run a sub-2-hour marathon on a ratified course in April’s London Marathon. Both hobbyists and pros have benefited from technological advancements that have led to faster shoes and better nutrition.
Because of the faster times, USA Track & Field lowered the time standard needed to qualify for the men’s marathon trials by two minutes, from 2:18:00 to 2:16:00, yet it still expects about the same number of qualifiers as in 2024, said Ben Rosario, the director of athlete experience for St. Louis’ local organizing committee. (The women’s standard of 2:37:00 remains the same.)
“I think that was a reasonable and fair change, and I think it was in line with what was happening in terms of how much faster people were running,” Rosario said. Currently, 134 men and 139 women have qualified for the 2028 trials.
Last year, Conner Mantz ran 2:04:43 to break the 23-year-old American record. Emily Sisson set the women’s U.S. record in 2022.
As the rest of the world speeds up, the U.S. is playing catch-up in global events. An American man hasn’t won Olympic gold in the marathon since Frank Shorter in 1972, and Joan Benoit was the last American woman to do so in 1984. The last time a U.S. man earned any medal in an Olympic marathon was in 2016, with 2021 yielding the last medal for a U.S. woman.
The men and women who make the U.S. team in St. Louis in 2028 will turn their preparation to the Olympic marathon in Los Angeles, which will begin at Venice Beach.
