Does Aliphine Have Your Attention Now?

On a cloudless 46-degree February afternoon in Atlanta’s Centennial Olympic Park, Aliphine Tuliamuk was a vision of cool.

- ANDREW LAWRENCE

Comfortably dressed for the weather in aquamarine knee-highs, a matching NAZ Elite long-sleeve, shades, and a crocheted red, white, and blue beanie, there was no missing her on the starting line for the 2020 U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials. Yet few saw her coming.

Her racing résumé earned her a front-line position at the head of a 450-woman field. But to her right and left were Jordan Hasay (who then held the second-fastest marathon time in U.S. history), Sally Kipyego (a silver medalist at the London Games), and Des Linden (2018 Boston champ and two-time Olympian). Running experts forecasting a too-close-to-call race barely gave the 30-year old Kenyan émigré an honorable mention.

In their defense, this was Tuliamuk’s first Olympic Trials. She was also barely six months recovered from a femoral stress fracture in her right leg. And she still seemed to be transitioning from a road-race specialist to the longer 26.2-mile distance. She’d also never run a marathon under this kind of pressure, or without pacesetters to rein in the aggressive tendencies that drove her to road victories but sunk her early marathons.

The trials course in Atlanta was full of undulating, washboard-like city streets culminating in a total ascent of 1,389 feet—nothing like the flat (maybe 300 feet of climbing), fast Rotterdam Marathon course, where she set her PR in 2019. But after she finished third there in 2:26:48, no one could say she didn’t belong on the sharp end of the pack here. It was a heady moment, her jangling nerves betraying her outer chill before yielding to an inner audacity. “I was pretty certain I would make the team,” she says.