BOSTON (AP) — Zouhair Talbi and Jess McClain ran the fastest times ever for Americans at the Boston Marathon on Monday, both finishing fifth in their respective divisions.
Talbi finished in 2 hours, 3 minutes, 45 seconds in the men's race. McClain finished in 2:20:49 in the women's competition. There were seven American men and 12 American women in the top 20, including four women in the top 10.
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Jess McClain, right, runs in the lead pack on the Boston Marathon course in Newton, Mass., on Monday, April 20, 2026. (AP Photo/Jennifer McDermott)
Jess McClain, right, runs in the lead pack on the Boston Marathon course in Newton, Mass., on Monday, April 20, 2026. (AP Photo/Jennifer McDermott)
Zouhair Talbi, Moroccan-born American runner, crosses the finish line in fifth place at the Boston Marathon, Monday, April 20, 2026, in Boston. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)
Jess McClain of Phoenix, the top American woman finisher, pumps her fist while approaching the finish line of the Boston Marathon, Monday, April 20, 2026, in Boston. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)
“I think we’re in an era in distance running, on the men and women’s sides, but especially the women’s side, where we’re all making each other so much better every time we line up with one another,” McClain said. “And I think it’s just going to get stronger and stronger.”
That's what's it's going to take, Talbi said, to take American distance running to the next level.
“We need to push each other, everyone needs to be in the pack,” said Talbi, who competed in the 2024 Paris Olympics for Morocco and became an American citizen last year.
Both were pleasantly surprised by their fast times. Talbi said he was more focused on trying to catch the runner ahead of him, which pushed him to run faster. McClain said she tries to ignore her watch during a race.
Talbi won the Houston Marathon in January in 2:05:45, a course record. He said he felt confident heading into Boston since he had achieved his personal best times at races this year.
“Everything was clicking, everything was good,” he said. “And I was like, this is the day.”
McClain finished seventh in her Boston debut last year and was the top American woman that time, too.
“Obviously I wanted to come in and defend the first American title, and to do that on a day like today with amazing conditions and to run the time that I knew was in me, at some point in the wheelhouse of what I can do, is really awesome,” she said.
Defending champion John Korir broke the Boston Marathon course record to win the men's race in 2:01:52 — the fifth-fastest marathon of all time. Sharon Lokedi joined her fellow Kenyan as a back-to-back champion, winning the women’s race in 2:18:51.
Last month at the U.S. half marathon championships in Atlanta, McClain was ahead by a wide margin with about 1.5 miles to go when she and three other runners followed the guide vehicle on a wrong turn. Track and field’s international governing body decided to allow seven Americans — instead of the usual four — to compete at the world championships in Denmark.
McClain said she made a far smaller U-turn on Monday, too. She dropped her bottle and went back to pick it up, then had to catch up with the lead pack.
“We all know what happened in Atlanta, I’ve been a half mile off course, so a few seconds is not going to throw me,” she said.
The previous records for American runners in Boston were set by Ryan Hall in 2011 and Shalane Flanagan in 2014.
This story corrects that four American women finished in the top 10, not five.
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Jess McClain, right, runs in the lead pack on the Boston Marathon course in Newton, Mass., on Monday, April 20, 2026. (AP Photo/Jennifer McDermott)
Jess McClain, right, runs in the lead pack on the Boston Marathon course in Newton, Mass., on Monday, April 20, 2026. (AP Photo/Jennifer McDermott)
Zouhair Talbi, Moroccan-born American runner, crosses the finish line in fifth place at the Boston Marathon, Monday, April 20, 2026, in Boston. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)
Jess McClain of Phoenix, the top American woman finisher, pumps her fist while approaching the finish line of the Boston Marathon, Monday, April 20, 2026, in Boston. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)
NEW YORK (AP) — Oil prices climbed Monday following the latest rise of tensions between the United States and Iran, but the moves were more modest than they were earlier in the war. U.S. stocks, meanwhile, gave back a bit of their record-breaking rally.
The S&P 500 slipped 0.2% from its all-time high for just its second drop in 14 days after the United States seized an Iranian-flagged cargo vessel that it said had tried to evade its blockade of Iranian ports. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dipped 4 points, or less than 0.1%, and the Nasdaq composite fell 0.3%.
The price for a barrel of Brent crude oil, the international standard, climbed 5.6% to settle at $95.48 on worries that Iran could keep petroleum pent up in the Persian Gulf if it continues to block tankers from exiting the Strait of Hormuz.
It’s a turnaround from the prior trading day on Wall Street, when stocks soared and oil prices tumbled after Iran said Friday it was reopening the strait to commercial traffic. That enthusiasm vanished quickly after Iran closed the strait again Saturday following the U.S. decision to press ahead with its blockade of Iranian ports.
The next big deadline is looming on Tuesday night at 8 p.m. Eastern time, which is early Wednesday Tehran time, when a ceasefire agreement between the United States and Iran is scheduled to expire.
Still, oil prices remain well below the high points reached so far in the war. Brent crude’s price briefly got above $119 per barrel when fears were at their highest. And the S&P 500 is still above where it was before the war.
Monday’s relatively muted moves suggest investors still see a possibility of a U.S.-Iranian agreement that could get oil flowing again from the Middle East to customers worldwide. It would be in both countries’ economic interests to end the war.
Companies with big fuel bills fell to some of Wall Street’s larger losses following the rise in crude’s cost, as they have through much of the war.
Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings dropped 3.5%, and Royal Caribbean Group lost 1.1%.
United Airlines sank 2.8%, and American Airlines fell 4.2% after American said it’s not interested in a merger with United. Airline stocks had flown higher last week following a report saying United wanted to combine with its rival.
On the winning side of Wall Street was TopBuild, a distributor of insulation and building products, which jumped 19.4%. QXO is buying it in a deal valued at roughly $17 billion.
QXO said the deal would make it the continent’s second-largest publicly traded building products distributor, and its stock fell 3.1%.
All told, the S&P 500 fell 16.92 points to 7,109.14. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dipped 4.87 to 49,442.56, and the Nasdaq composite slipped 64.09 to 24,404.39.
One big reason the U.S. stock market has been so strong recently is the big profits that U.S. companies have been reporting for the first three months of 2026, as well as expectations for continued growth.
While reporting stronger profits for the latest quarter than analysts expected, several of the biggest U.S. banks said last week that they see the U.S. economy remaining resilient, particularly because of solid spending by U.S. consumers.
“Despite geopolitical risks, the earnings recovery remains intact,” according to Morgan Stanley strategists led by Michael Wilson. It’s remained so solid that analysts have even raised their profit expectations since the war began for the spring of 2026.
Along with JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and other big banks, about 10% of companies in the S&P 500 have already reported their results for the start of 2026. Nearly nine out of 10 have delivered a bigger profit than analysts expected, according to FactSet.
If the rest of the companies in the index match analysts’ expectations, overall earnings per share for S&P 500 companies will end up 13% higher than a year earlier, according to FactSet.
That’s big because stock prices tend to follow the path of corporate profits over the long term. Other companies scheduled to report their results this week include UnitedHealth Group on Tuesday, Tesla on Wednesday and Procter & Gamble on Friday.
In stock markets abroad, indexes fell in Europe following a better finish in Asia. Germany’s DAX lost 1.2%, and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng added 0.8% for two of the world’s bigger moves.
AP Business Writers Matt Ott and Elaine Kurtenbach contributed to this report.
Trader Michael Milano, left, works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Monday, April 20, 2026. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
People work on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange in New York, Monday, April 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
People walk in front of an electronic stock board showing Japan's Nikkei index at a securities firm Monday, April 20, 2026, in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)
People walk in front of an electronic stock board showing Japan's Nikkei index at a securities firm Monday, April 20, 2026, in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)
A broker watches his screens at the stock market in Frankfurt, Germany, Friday, April 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Michael Probst)
Currency traders work near a screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI), top center, and the foreign exchange rate between U.S. dollar and South Korean won, top center left, at the foreign exchange dealing room of the Hana Bank headquarters, in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, April 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
People stand in front of an electronic stock board showing Japan's Nikkei index at a securities firm Monday, April 20, 2026, in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)
People work on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange in New York, Monday, April 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
