El Morabity and Nakache win the 40th Marathon des Sables; Des Linden third woman
El Morabity beat his brother Rachid by nearly half an hour, Nakache won all six stages, and Linden was third woman in her first Marathon des Sables.
Photograph: Des Linden on Heartbreak Hill on her way to winning the 2018 Boston Marathon, by Rob Larsen from Boston, USA, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia CommonsThe 40th Marathon des Sables finished in the Moroccan Sahara on Saturday. Six stages, about 270 km, more than 1,500 runners from 68 countries, and the longest single stage in the race's history: 100 km on Stage 4, up from the usual 82.
Mohamed El Morabity won the men's race in 20 hours 47 minutes 39 seconds. He took five of the six stages and finished nearly 29 minutes ahead of his brother Rachid, who has won this race eleven times and took the one stage Mohamed did not. Ludovic Pommeret of France, last summer's Hardrock 100 winner, was third in 21:18:43 on his first start here. Ahmed Ouikhalfen and Ryan Sandes completed the top five.
Maryline Nakache of France won the women's race for the third time after 2023 and 2025, in 25:54:29, and won every stage. Aziza El Amrany, the 2024 champion, was second in 29:22:34. Des Linden, the 2018 Boston Marathon winner and a two-time Olympian, was third in 30:16:32. It was Linden's first Marathon des Sables, two months after her first trail race at the Black Canyon 50K, and she was third on the 100 km stage in 12:16:57.
A week of stages in sand is a strange place for a road marathoner to go looking for a new life. Linden went and finished on the podium. Running does not care what you used to be.
