After a combination of ill fortune, illness and injury combined to halt his impressive progress, the British runner talks about how he is planning to become a force on the global distance running stage again.
Emile Cairess has some lofty goals over the next few months. If the London Marathon goes well in April, he sees no reason why he cannot run “a good bit faster” than Mo Farah’s British record. Then comes a double 10,000m bid this summer at the Glasgow Commonwealth Games and Birmingham European Championships, where medals are not out of the question.
But, when Cairess really whittles down his core ambition and identifies what he truly desires from athletics in 2026, it is simple: he just wants to race.
“That’s the point of the sport,” he says. “To race, get results and enjoy it, which is the opposite to what happened to me last year. I just want to be out there competing regularly. If I’m doing that I think it will go well.”
For some time, the 28-year-old has been touted as Britain’s next male distance running star; the man primed to take Farah’s mantle as a truly world-class athlete. After an impressive sixth-place marathon debut in London in 2023, it was his performances over 26.2 miles the following year that suggested this was a runner capable of breaking into the mainstream.
In only his second year specialising over the distance, he finished third at the London Marathon – clocking 2:06:46 to move behind Farah on the British all-time list – before then finishing fourth in Paris when posting Britain’s best men’s Olympic marathon performance for two decades.
When Cairess was announced for the 2025 London Marathon, the expectation was that Farah’s national mark of 2:05:11 would soon be consigned to history. But then came a wretched run of luck that cropped up with frustrating frequency. “It was,” says Cairess, “a pretty disappointing year.”
The issues had actually begun at the tail end of 2024, when he caught tonsillitis while at a training camp in Kenya. When he returned to action after a break, his Achilles then started causing him problems, and the knock-on effect was soreness in his posterior tibial tendon – the part of the body that, in simplistic terms, connects the calf muscle to the bones in the foot. “I tend to get niggles when I take breaks and then come back,” says Cairess.
The problem took longer to heal than initially expected and, unable to run throughout January, February and into the start of March, it became clear that his hopes of contesting a third London Marathon were over.
The unencumbered months that followed included a 10km race in Laredo, Spain, and a 10,000m victory at the British Championships, where he clocked a personal best 27:27.95 despite running much of the race solo. Then followed a freak elbow infection, which knocked him out for a number of prime summer training weeks. By the time he arrived on the marathon startline for the Tokyo World Championships in September, he suspected he was under-prepared.
“I didn’t really have the background because I’d missed the build-up for London [Marathon],” he explains. “The marathon training ended up being squeezed into a really short period of time. I think, by the time I got to Worlds, I’d done good sessions and was in pretty good shape. But, for a marathon, you need to have a long build-up. Once I got past 20 miles, I didn’t have the background I’d normally have.”
The result was the first DNF of his athletics career, as he ground to a halt just 2km from the finish line, overwhelmed by Japan’s stifling hot temperatures and humidity.
“If it had been a cool race I think I would have maybe done okay,” he says. “But the heat, combined with the lack of marathon-specific training sessions, got to me. So it didn’t end well. I’d never not finished a race in my whole life. I was just really hot, so I wanted to stop more than I wanted to finish. I was more disappointed about not doing well than not finishing.”
In spite of that big-stage disappointment, which brought an end to a “really frustrating year”, Cairess believes the tricky 12-month period should nonetheless prove beneficial in the long term.
“It was difficult, but it’s not the worst-case scenario where I’ve had a stress fracture or been really set back with stuff,” he says. “The injury at the beginning of last year wasn’t ideal, but apart from that I’ve been really consistent. I’ve still got many months of pretty good training under me, and most weeks have gone well. Even though I haven’t got good results, I definitely feel like I’ve progressed. I feel like I just need a bit of luck.”
Making his first public outing since failing to finish in Tokyo, Cairess again stopped early at December’s Valencia Marathon. This time, the premature ending was planned, with Cairess employed to pace a group of athletes targeting a 2:06 finish to 30km. Feeling so good at that point, he then slowed slightly to allow fellow British athletes Alex Yee and Phil Sesemann to latch onto his coattails, guiding them through 36km before calling it a day.
His exploits helped push Olympic triathlon champion Yee to a remarkable time of 2:06:38, shunting Cairess down to third on the British all-time standings.
“We’re the same school year so we’ve raced against each other since we were 13 or 14,” says Cairess, of Yee. “I’ve known him for a long time. For only his second marathon, it was really impressive. There’s obviously more there.”
Most importantly for Cairess, the run provided a major boost ahead of his own upcoming marathon comeback in London.
“I was pleased because it felt pretty comfortable,” he says. “I knew that if I was in pretty good shape in Valencia, I can build on that for London. That was the rationale behind it – making sure that my specific marathon fitness is close to where it needs to be, before starting the real training.
“Basically, I just didn’t want to run the whole thing because I thought it would affect my training afterwards. I could have done more, but I wanted to be consistent with my training. I didn’t want to get carried away.”
With illness having thwarted his plan to race last month’s Valencia 10km, his competitive return is scheduled for the Malaga Half-Marathon in March, before finally launching a much-delayed assault on Farah’s marathon mark over the streets of London. With pacing times yet to be confirmed, he expects to join a race-day group aiming to go through halfway somewhere between 61:40 and 62 minutes. Continue on such a pace and he should be capable of taking a chunk off Farah’s best time, set when winning the Chicago Marathon in 2018.
“I feel like I can run a good bit faster [than the British record],” says Cairess. “My previous runs at London have been completely solo. I’ve had pacemakers, but haven’t actually run with any other athletes, which isn’t the most enjoyable or the optimum way to run. Hopefully, this year, I can be in a good group and run as fast as I plan. You just have to hope the training comes together. If it all does then I can look beyond the British record by a fair way.”
A regular in the London Mini Marathon during his teenage years, the race retains a special place in Cairess’ heart: “It’s the one race in my career I’d really love to win. Apart from the Olympics, London is definitely the race that any British athlete who does marathons really aspires to. I’d rather win London far beyond all the other [marathon] majors.”
READ MORE: Cairess to attack Farah’s British record
Whether that is a realistic aim this year likely depends on the strength of his rivals, with 16 men running a marathon quicker than 2:04:30 throughout 2025. Cairess says it is “a good few years before I’m really at my peak”, suggesting 31 or 32 could prove his optimum age. Yet he insists he is “developed enough in my training that I can start performing really well now”.
His average of 215km to 230km (roughly 130 to 140 miles) each week is unlikely to rise much more over the remainder of his career, but he believes scope for improvement comes from a capacity for greater consistency over fast long training runs.
Since 2022, sessions have been set by Renato Canova, the Italian octogenarian, who has guided dozens of athletes to Olympic and world medals. While Canova’s poor health means the relationship is mainly now conducted over the phone, Cairess still sees his coach when he travels to Italy and, invariably, on Kenyan camps. Otherwise, Cairess undertakes the bulk of his training in his home town of Leeds – where he often runs alongside athletes from the Leeds Talent Hub – while he sleeps every night in an altitude tent to ensure he “feels more relaxed that I’m not missing out compared to people at altitude”.
No stone is left unturned in the bid for improvement. Now – after last year’s infuriating standstill – Cairess is just desperate to show the fruits of his labours. “I don’t do all the training just for the training. I do it to get good results.”
The racer is ready to compete.
