Tamirat Tola feels a carefully planned build-up will give him every chance of adding the London Marathon title to his success in New York.

The 32-year-old Ethiopian – world champion from 2022 in Oregon – clocked a new course record of two hours, four minutes and 58 seconds when he won in Manhattan during November last year.

Tola hopes his meticulous preparations will allow him to again hit top form as he aims to be the first over the finish line on the Mall on Sunday afternoon, having come third last year.

“(Winning in) London is not easy, but I worked hard to win New York and my training has all been OK since then, so I am ready,” said Tola, who also took the 2023 Great North Run title.

“Everything is good with what my coaches have prepared for me to win, so we can hope for a good result on Sunday.”

The late Kelvin Kiptum, who was killed in a car accident in February at the age of 24, set a new London Marathon record with victory last year.

While that mark of 2hrs 1min and 25secs is unlikely to be tested on Sunday, Tola is still confident of a swift pace.

“If we go together to help each other, then we will run with a better time,” Tola said.

“It depends on a pacemaker, but it is OK for me to go fast, and if it is a normal (pace) then that is also OK for me.”

Emile Cairess will lead Britain’s hopes in the elite men’s race, having finished sixth on his debut last year.

Cairess is aiming to better the Olympic qualifying mark to join training partner Phil Sesemann in the Team GB squad for Paris.

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The 26-year-old, though, also has one eye on a long-term target of breaking Sir Mo Farah’s six-year-old British marathon record, which was set in Chicago.

“I have a time in my head. I will be trying to run maybe about three-minute kilometres,” Cairess said.

“Mo’s British record is something I definitely want to beat in the near future, but I am not looking at that this weekend.”

Scottish marathon record-holder Callum Hawkins will make his return in London following a number of injury setbacks, which included ankle surgery after the Tokyo Olympics.

Marc Scott, winner of the Great North Run in 2021, is set for a marathon debut, along with Mahamed Mahamed.

In the elite women’s race, world record holder Tigst Assefa hopes to produce a new women’s-only best time.

“I was very happy in breaking the world record. Also I got a lot of praise and encouragement from people around me afterwards, that was very important for me,” said Assefa, who will compete in her first London Marathon.

“My training has gone really well and I have done all the training that has been set by my coach. I feel I am ready for the race on Sunday.”

British athletes Becky Briggs and Alice Wright will also be in the elite field, along with Anya Culling, Rachel Hodgkinson, Helen Gaunt, Mhairi Maclennan and Lucy Reid.

David Weir will make his 25th consecutive London Marathon appearance, which he last won in 2018, with Switzerland’s Marcel Hug again the man to beat in the elite men’s wheelchair race.

Weir, 44, changed to a carbon fibre chair this winter, and finished third at the Boston Marathon on April 15.

“Hopefully I can get another one (London Marathon victory). Maybe not on Sunday, we will see,” he said. “It depends on that machine down there to be honest.”

Sir Mo Farah admits his career has been “an amazing journey” after he completed his final-ever race at the Great North Run.

The 40-year-old announced he would be ending his career at the North East half-marathon earlier this year and finished fourth in the men’s elite race.

He completed the course in  one hour three minutes and 28 seconds, with Ethopia’s Tamirat Tola coming in first, finishing just shy of the hour mark with a time of 59min 58sec.

The race brought down the curtain on a glittering career for Farah, who finishes with four Olympic gold medals and six World Championship titles, but he insists he “just enjoyed” what he did.

“It’s been an amazing journey when I look back, there’s been so many messages from people all over the world saying thank you,” he told PA news agency post-race.

“It’s a joy to see that because I just enjoyed what I did and I committed and continued to push myself to win medals again and again.

“To look back from the other side now and see people saying to you, this is what you’ve given us, this is what you’ve done is incredible to see.”

Farah is a six-time champion of the Great North Run, with his last victory coming in 2019 on the streets of Tyneside.

He was clapped and cheered all down the final stretch of the Coast Road, offering high fives to the crowd, before crossing the finish line for the last time, describing the support as “incredible”.

“When I woke up this morning I knew it was going to be emotional day,” he added.

“But I just tried to hold that back and get on with it, but I knew it was going to be a different day.

“I was trying to enjoy as much as I could, to take it all in, but I took it as just like another race. But honestly, just the support of the people along the course was just wow.

“I was trying to hold it back and get on with the race and give it a go.

“(When approaching the finish line) I knew my career was done, but I was trying to soak it in and engaging with the people.

“Honestly the people on the course was incredible, big support, (hearing them) ringing the bell, shouting out your name. I can’t believe the amount of people who turned up.”

Olympic marathon champion Peres Jepchirchir won the women’s elite race with a time of 1:06:45 and Briton Charlotte Purdue finished in third, completing the course in 1:09:36.

Daniel Sidbury won the men’s wheelchair race, with David Weir finishing just behind him in second while Samantha Kinghorn won the women’s competition.

Sir Mo Farah is one of the Olympic greats and will go down in British sporting history.

The four-time champion has called it quits after his final race in the Great North Run.

The sight of Farah failing to reach the Tokyo Olympics during a last-ditch attempt in Manchester in June 2021 will not be his enduring image but it will be one when it was clear his time was up.

His dominance was over, the final push was not there and his legs no longer had it in them.

Before then, on the track at least, he had been all conquering and gave British sports fans some of the most memorable moments of the last decade.

None more so than at London 2012 when, already a 5,000m world champion – having failed to make the same final at the 2008 Beijing Olympics – Farah helped create the biggest day in British Olympic history.

Farah, Jessica Ennis-Hill and Greg Rutherford added three gold medals in 48 minutes at the Olympic Stadium, after wins in the men’s coxless four, women’s lightweight double sculls and women’s team pursuit earlier in the day.

He stormed to 10,000m gold after Ennis-Hill had won the heptathlon and Rutherford claimed the long jump title.

Seven days later he won the 5,000m to write his name further into British Olympic folklore.

It allowed Farah to become a personality and transcended athletics and the ‘Mobot’ became a symbol of his success.

He adopted it after it was suggested by presenter Clare Balding and then named by James Corden on TV show A League of Their Own just two months before the London Games.

A robot was even named “Mobot” at a Plymouth University research exhibition.

A year after London he became a double world and Olympic champion after victory in the 10,000m and 5,000m at the World Championships in Moscow, the first British athlete to win two individual gold medals at the Worlds.

In 2014 he stepped up to the marathon for the first time, coming eighth in London but continued to shine on the track, defending his world titles in 2015.

All roads then led to Rio with Farah completing a historic double double by defending his London titles – despite falling in the 10,000m.

“After the 10k my legs were a bit tired, and I don’t know how I recovered. I had to take an ice bath and stay in my room, there were people bringing me food in my room and I was just resting up,” he said.

“I can’t believe I did it. I did it! It’s every athlete’s dream, as I said… I can’t believe it, it hasn’t sunk in yet.”

Back in the Olympic Stadium in 2017 he won another 10,000m world title and came second in the 5,000m in London before announcing his retirement from the track to focus on the marathon.

Yet, aside from a victory in the Chicago race in 2018, he failed to convince.

At the start of his marathon career he also split from controversial Alberto Salazar amid a US anti-doping investigation into the coach.

“I’m not leaving the Nike Oregon Project and Alberto Salazar because of the doping allegations,” Farah said at the time. “This situation has been going on for over two years. If I was going to leave because of that I would have done.

“As I’ve always said, I’m a firm believer in clean sport and I strongly believe that anyone who breaks the rules should be punished. If Alberto had crossed the line, I would be out the door but Usada has not charged him with anything. If I had ever had any reason to doubt Alberto, I would not have stood by him all this time.”

A return to the track to defend his 10,000m title was announced in 2019 and, while the 12-month coronavirus delay to the Tokyo Games gave him more time, it also left him a year older.

At the official trials in Birmingham, Farah failed to hit the qualification mark, finishing 22 seconds adrift, and a hastily arranged race at the Manchester Regional Arena was his final chance.

As the stadium got quieter – with the PA slowly stopping announcing his lap times – it quickly became apparent Farah would not achieve his goal and in the immediate aftermath he hinted retirement was on his mind.

Now, he has officially hung up his spikes but will go down in athletics as an Olympic great.

Sir Mo Farah said he and his family were “sucking it all in” after he continued his farewell with an eighth-placed finish in the Great Manchester Run 10K, the penultimate race of his career.

Britain’s greatest distance runner posted a time of 29 minutes and 11 seconds as he took part in the event for the first time since winning it in 2018.

Farah, who came ninth in last month’s London Marathon, is now set to conclude his glittering career with September’s Great North Run, the race he won for six successive years from 2014 to 2019.

The four-time Olympic and six-time world champion, 40, said: “Today wasn’t an easy race, the race was full of good athletes, but I gave it my all and again had great support.

“When I was coming back the last 2k, honestly – it was amazing support I got from the crowd, all the way through.

“I will miss it, because I love doing what I did over the years and I will the miss the crowd, the support. My mind wants to do it but my body can’t quite do it, and obviously you’ve got to call it a day.

“But I’m also looking forward to retiring, spending time with my kids and hopefully still be involved in the sport and see what I can do.

“We’re just enjoying it. I’m with my kids, and they took part in the mini race as well. So as a family we’re having a good time, enjoying it, sucking it all in.”

Farah said of the Great North Run: “I’m looking forward to that because I’ve taken part in so many, won it six times, and I want to close, for my retirement, there, because of the people, the support.

“I promised Brendan Foster ‘one day you’ll see me crossing that bridge in the lead’, and I’ve done that six times – and hopefully one more time maybe.”

Regarding the future beyond that, he added: “I’d love to be involved in the sport because that’s all I know and I just love to see youngsters (with) a hurdle in their way and thinking they can do it.

“I started off early on in my career young, not knowing anything, and then over the years you learn and I feel like what I’ve learned throughout the years (I want to be) giving back to the sport and the younger generation.

“Obviously I’ve been talking to a lot of people who are still involved in the sport. I’m passionate about the sport, I love athletics and I love the people who achieve a lot, like Jake Wightman and Laura Muir, and there’s a lot of youngsters coming through.

“Seeing them, it does motivate me, it does make me feel like ‘wow’. And again, when you see that, you’re like – ‘what can I do?’

“It almost gives you the next wave of energy of going ‘there’s something I can do’, and it’s just finding that right role, and hopefully in not too long.”

The men’s elite race was won by Italy’s Eyob Faniel, who was 44 seconds faster than Farah and four seconds ahead of second-placed Briton Marc Scott.

Kenya’s Hellen Obiri retained the elite women’s title, clocking a time of 31 minutes 14 seconds.