2 weeks Ago
Every now and then, Conner Mantz allows his mind to drift back to the same stretch of last November's New York City Marathon. Around 16 miles in, coming off the Queensborough Bridge into Manhattan, the lead pack accelerated. Mantz, starting to feel uncomfortable, let the other runners go.
But grinding through to the end, he finished strong – with the fastest final mile in the top 10 – and crossed the line with enough in the tank to leave that dangerous question, as old as time itself. What if? "Had I gone with that move, maybe I would have blown up," Mantz told the Guardian in an interview. "But maybe I would have been there fighting for the win at the end.
"I would rather be there, risking it a little bit more, so that at the end I can try and win, than getting a safe [result]: always ending up in the top eight, but never being in the top three." Last year was an extraordinary one for the 28-year-old, who won the US Olympic marathon trials in February; finished eighth, as top American, at the Olympic marathon in August; and finished sixth in New York in November. View image in fullscreen Conner Mantz celebrates after placing first during the 2024 US Olympic team trials for marathon on 3 February 2024 in Orlando, Florida.
Photograph: Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images He is seen, understandably, as a serious contender for Monday's Boston Marathon. "The competitor that he is, I feel like he has a great chance of podium, for sure," said Meb Keflezighi, who won Boston in 2014 – the first American man to do so in three decades – and New York in 2009. "Don't count him out.
" Mantz, by his own admission, gives himself a hard time. "You sound like you ran terrible," a former college teammate commented after the trials last February. "But you won.
" He had struggled through the final stages of the race, in lockstep with his training partner Clayton Young, who ultimately allowed him to take the win. "I may have beaten Clayton. But in my mind, he demolished me," said.
.. Callum Jones.
