Training Partners Conner Mantz & Clayton Young Finish Top 10 in 2024 Olympic Marathon

PARIS — Ahead of the 2024 Olympic marathon, coach Ed Eyestone told his two American marathoners, Conner Mantz and Clayton Young, that he thought it would take a time of 2:08 to get on the podium on Saturday morning. It was a number that made sense. Only two men had ever broken 2:08 in the Olympic marathon, typically a hot race in which few athletes are willing to make an early move. And this was no typical Olympic marathon — the course is widely considered the hardest in Olympic history, with a trio of brutal climbs at 16k, 20k, and 29k.

(More 2024 Olympic Marathon Coverage: Race Recap: A Late Injury Substitution, Tamirat Tola Conquers Paris’ Hills, Wins 2024 Olympic Marathon In Spectacular 2:06:26 OR)

Yet the competitors rose to the occasion on the beautiful yet demanding course, with temperatures in the 60s, slightly cooler than usual. While Mantz (2:08:12) and Young (2:08:44) both hit their 2:08 benchmark, they wound up 8th and 9th overall on a day where Ethiopia’s Tamirat Tola ran an Olympic record of 2:06:26 for gold and it took 2:07:00 by Kenya’s Benson Kipruto to earn the bronze medal. Both Mantz and Young ran within 45 seconds of their personal bests, sensational running on such a hilly course. Ahead of the race, Eyestone told LetsRun.com he would consider anything in the top 10 a “big win,” and that is what his runners delivered.

“We executed a great race,” Young said. “Honestly, we both, in the back of our minds, wanted to be on the podium. We wanted more. But to be top 10 is a great, great day.”

Both men had small regrets that left them wondering what might have been.

Kevin Morris photo

When Tola made a push around 20k to catch early leader Eyob Faniel of Italy, Mantz decided to follow and wound up hitting halfway in the lead alongside the two men in 64:52, seven seconds ahead of the chase pack. Mantz was feeling good and felt that if he could execute a negative-split (which he did), he could end the day on the podium.

“I was trying to stay calm,” Mantz said. “I probably wasn’t as calm, but I was like, I think I can medal today.”

Mantz had correctly identified Tola as the main threat, but had underestimated the rest of the field, who would reel in the lead group by 25k. Though Mantz would split 64:52/63:20 for his two halves, he said in retrospect he may have been better served hanging back with the pack rather than responding to Tola’s first move.

“It’s hard to make those judgments mid-race,” Mantz said. “You don’t really understand that everybody else is feeling good if you are. It’s easy to say, oh well if we’re broken away, I’m feeling really good, and I’m going to negative split this, you forget that everybody here is really, really good.”

The “Low-Five”

Young was part of that chase group that rejoined the leaders, and once he caught up, he and Mantz recreated their low-five from the Olympic Trials in February. But while Mantz regretted moving too early, Young regretted going too late. The first hill, around 16k, had felt tough for Young, and he know the final climb of the race, the “Wall Hill” at 29 kilometers, would be even tougher, so he made sure not to overextend himself.

“Going up that final hill, I decided to be patient, and maybe I was a little too patient and saved a little bit, maybe too much, for the end,” Young said. “I was surprised with how good I felt with 3-4k to go. I just left too much in the tank.”

Overall, however, this was a great day for the two Utah-based BYU alums. Mantz’s 2:07:47 pb ranked him 56th in the field. Young’s 2:08:00 ranked him 61st. They finished 8th and 9th.

“Pretty proud of my race,” Mantz said. “Fitness was definitely there today, but execution could have used a little bit of work. But I’ll take it.”

Kevin Morris photo

As he reflected on his race to reporters in the mixed zone, Young’s eyes began to well with pride. Young had finished 136th at the US Olympic Marathon Trials in 2020 and few had him as a contender to make the 2024 team 12 months ago — especially considering he was coming back from knee surgery in February 2023. Since then, however, Young has put together three strong marathons in the last 10 months — a 2:08:00 pb to hit the Olympic standard in Chicago, a 2:09:06 runner-up performance at the Trials (where many think he let Mantz take the win), and now a 2:08:44 for 9th in the Olympics. He and Mantz clearly stand atop US marathoning in 2024.

“I’m proud,” Young said, his voice catching. “Proud of my season, proud to get through a build side by side with Conner. We wanted more, to be on the podium, but we’ve gotta celebrate this. To say that I’d be top-10 at an Olympic Games a year and a half ago? It’s unreal.”

Training for Paris

Unlike the Trials buildup, where the two men ran nearly every step together, Mantz relocated to Park City to prepare for Paris for a few extra thousand feet of elevation while Young, a father of two, stayed home near their usual training base of Provo. They would still work out together on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and the occasional Saturday, but Mantz missed time early in the buildup due to injury.

Mantz likes to be active, and usually when he takes a break after running a marthon, he is outdoors, hiking or walking with his wife, Kylie. But Mantz’s break after the Olympic Trials in February fell during a cold, snowy period in Utah. By the end of 10 days off of running — “the hardest break I’ve ever taken, other than serving a mission,” Mantz said — he was excited and ready to go.

Too excited, it turned out. Mantz wanted to work on hills and he also wanted to improve his speed, which led to him doing strides with BYU’s Sebastian Fernandez, a 1:46 800 runner. He wound up running too fast and eventually suffered a two-inch wide tear in his rectus femoris, a muscle in his quad. Initially, he tried to train through it, but he would up taking off six weeks of running this spring.

“I shouldn’t have been doing strides with an 800-meter runner,” Mantz said. “I showed my speed was in a good spot, but just doing too much, too soon.”

Mantz still cross-trained a lot — one day, he says, he swam 10,000 yards (5.7 miles) — and when he returned to running, he hunted out anything near Park City that would approximate Paris’s hills. Such runs were hard to find, but he located a couple near the Deer Valley ski resort: one called Guardsman Pass, where one of the miles averaged a 10% grade, and another set of switchbacks that ran parallel to a ski lift.

Shortly before Paris, Mantz’s quad acted up again, and his doctor advised him not to run downhill on it. So Kylie would drop him at the bottom of the hill, drive up, then drive Conner back down to the bottom so he could do it again. An odd arrangement, but one piece of the puzzle that allowed Mantz to record a top-10 finish on a strong day for American marathoners in Paris.

“I was trying to get as many steep hills as I could in,” Mantz said. “I feel like I was well-prepared for the hills.”

(More 2024 Olympic Marathon Coverage: Race Recap: A Late Injury Substitution, Tamirat Tola Conquers Paris’ Hills, Wins 2024 Olympic Marathon In Spectacular 2:06:26 OR)