According to New York Road Runners, the 2022 United Airlines NYC Half on Sunday, March 20 will feature the best professional athlete field in the event’s history. The elite line-up includes 24 Olympians, eight Paralympians, and six open division athletes who hold half marathon national records in their respective countries.
The open division will include US Olympic medallists Galen Rupp and Molly Seidel, along with American half-marathon record holder Sara Hall. Meanwhile TCS New York City Marathon champions and US Paralympic medallists Tatyana McFadden and Daniel Romanchuk will aim to defend their titles in the wheelchair division.
The United Airlines NYC Half is one of New York Road Runners’ (NYRR’s) signature races, taking runners from Brooklyn’s Prospect Park to Manhattan’s Central Park, and passing historic landmarks and diverse neighbourhoods and views of the city along the way before ending near the TCS New York City Marathon finish line.
After being cancelled in 2020 and not held in 2021 due to the pandemic, the United Airlines NYC Half will return at full scale this year with an expected field of 25,000 runners – marking the first NYRR race to return to its traditional field size. All professional athletes in the field will be required to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19.
Men’s Open Division
Galen Rupp, the American record-holder in the 10,000m who won silver in the distance at the London 2012 Olympics and bronze in the marathon at the Rio 2016 Olympics, will race the event for the second time, having previously finished third in 2011 on the event’s old course.
Challenging Rupp will be the 10K world record-holder Rhonex Kipruto from Kenya, and the American 5K record-holder Ben True, who in 2018 became the first American man to win the race in the open division.
Five-time US Olympian Abdi Abdirahman will make his 10th appearance in the event, while US Army officer Elkanah Kibet will make his debut after finishing as the top American in fourth place overall at the 2021 TCS New York City Marathon. Two-time NCAA cross-country champion and reigning US half marathon champion Conner Mantz will also make his New York City road racing debut.
Women’s Open Division
Eight-time national champion Sara Hall, no stranger to New York as the two-time defending champion of the Mastercard New York Mini 10K, will enter the event as the fastest American in the distance, having broken the national half marathon record in Houston in January with a time of 1:07:15.
She did so on the same course where her husband and coach, Ryan Hall, broke the men’s record 15 years ago.
Molly Seidel will look to star in her first appearance in the race coming off a 2021 that included a bronze medal in the Tokyo Olympic marathon and an American course record and fourth-place finish at the TCS New York City Marathon.
The deep US women’s contingent also includes two-time Olympian and 2018 Boston Marathon champion Des Linden, 2021 Chicago Marathon runner-up Emma Bates, 2021 TCS New York City Marathon seventh-place finisher Annie Frisbie, two-time Olympian Kim Conley, and reigning US national champions Erika Kemp and Makena Morley.
The Americans will face a stacked group of international women that includes two-time World Championships silver medallist Senbere Teferi of Ethiopia, 2021 European Cross-Country Championships gold medallist Karoline Bjerkeli-Grøvdal of Norway, and two-time World Championships gold medallist and former New York, Boston, and London Marathon winner Edna Kiplagat of Kenya.
Men’s Wheelchair Division
Daniel Romanchuk, a two-time Paralympic medalist and two-time TCS New York City Marathon winner, will look to defend his title in the event after winning in 2019 in 51:35. In 2018, Romanchuk became the first American and youngest athlete ever to win the men’s wheelchair division at the TCS New York City Marathon, and repeated as champion in 2019.
Last year, he won his first set of Paralympic medals, taking 400m gold by one hundredth of a second and then winning bronze in the marathon.
A trio of University of Illinois freshmen – Evan Correll, Philip Croft and Jason Robinson – will line up alongside Romanchuk, as all three make their half marathon debuts.
Women’s Wheelchair Division
Tatyana McFadden will headline the women’s wheelchair division as an NYRR Team for Kids Ambassador, a six-time Paralympian, 20-time Paralympic medalist, and the first-ever winner of the Abbott World Marathon Majors wheelchair series.
In her career, she has won five New York City Marathons, including four consecutively, and is now looking for her second consecutive and third overall title in the United Airlines NYC Half.
She will be challenged by Switzerland’s Manuela Schär, who won the race in 2018 and 2015. The Swiss powerhouse racer took home five medals from her fifth Paralympic Games in Tokyo last year before going on to win the Berlin, London, and Boston Marathons and finish third in New York.
The event’s 2017 champion Susannah Scaroni will return to the roads for the first time since she was injured in a car accident last autumn/fall while training on the roads. She won a gold and bronze medal at the Tokyo Paralympics last summer and is the three-time defending champion of the Mastercard New York Mini 10K.
The 2022 United Airlines NYC Half women’s open and wheelchair division professional athlete fields are presented by Mastercard.
Live coverage of the event will be available on ABC New York, Channel 7 in the New York area from 06:00 to 10:00 ET on race day, with a full livestream available nationally and internationally at 07:00 ET on abcyny.com, ESPN3 and NYRR’s social media platforms.
