Boston Marathon 2024: Half a million fans line the streets on Patriots Day for the 128th edition of the historic race… with NFL legend Rob Gronkowski awaiting 30,000 runners at the finish line

Patriots legend Rob Gronkowski waits at the finish line for 30,000 runners participating in the Boston Marathon on Monday.

All 50 U.S. states – and nearly 130 countries – were represented in the 128th edition of the historic race, with around 500,000 fans expected to line the streets of Boston.

The action kicked off around 9 a.m. ET with the men’s and women’s wheelchair races before the elite racers hit the road a half-hour later.

Then, Monday at 10 a.m. ET, the crowd of amateur runners began the 26.2-mile journey from Hopkinton to the finish line on Boylston Street.

Gronkowski, a former NFL tight end, was waiting at the end of the world’s oldest and most prestigious annual marathon. The 34-year-old spent nearly a decade in New England, winning three Super Bowls alongside Tom Brady with the Patriots.

Around 500,000 supporters are expected in the streets of Boston for this historic race.

Gronkowski, former New England Patriots tight end, named race ‘grand marshal’

Around 10 a.m. ET on Monday, the crowd of amateur runners began the 26.2-mile journey.

Gronkowski was named “grand marshal” of the race, after winning the Patriots’ 2024 award. He was seen holding the trophy – and throwing a football – early Monday morning.

“We couldn’t ask for a better day,” he said before getting into an electric car that transported him along the route. “The City of Boston is always supportive no matter the event. The weather is perfect, the energy is bursting.

Security was tight in Boston as this year’s race marked the 11th anniversary of the tragic bombing that killed three people and injured hundreds more.

The Patriots’ Day race also took place on One Boston Day, when the city remembers the victims of the 2013 tragedy. At the finish line on Boylston Street, bagpipes accompanied Governor Maura Healey, the mayor of Boston Michelle Wu and family members of the victims as they laid a pair of wreaths at the scene of the explosions.

Sisay Lemma of Ethiopia took the lead in the men’s race Monday morning.

Switzerland’s Marcel Hug claimed a sixth victory in the men’s wheelchair race – in record time

Yuma Morii of Japan breaks away from the pack during the men’s elite race in Boston

Great Britain’s Eden Rainbow-Cooper crosses the finish line to win the women’s wheelchair race

From the start, Britain’s Eden Rainbow-Cooper won the women’s wheelchair race, while Switzerland’s Marcel Hug righted himself after crashing into a barrier before taking a sixth victory in the men’s race – in one time record.

Hug was already four minutes ahead at about 18 miles when he reached the historic fire station turn in Newton. He fell into the fence, flipped onto his side, but quickly got back on track.

He finished in 1 hour, 15 minutes and 33 seconds, beating his previous record of 1:33 to win his 14th consecutive major marathon and his 24th overall.

The festivities began around 6 a.m., when race director Dave McGillivray sent out about 30 members of the Massachusetts National Guard.

The otherwise sleepy New England town of Hopkinton celebrated its 100th anniversary as the starting line, sending on its way a peloton of 17 former champions and nearly 30,000 other runners.

Near the finish on Boylston Street, officials marked the anniversary of the 2013 bombing that left three people dead and hundreds injured.

Three people were killed and more than 260 injured when two pressure cooker bombs exploded at the marathon finish line.

The dead included Lu Lingzi, a 23-year-old Chinese graduate student at Boston University; Krystle Campbell, a 29-year-old restaurant manager from Medford, Massachusetts; and Martin Richard, 8 years old, who went to watch the marathon with his family.

During a tense four-day manhunt that paralyzed the city, Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer Sean Collier was shot to death in his car. Boston police officer Dennis Simmonds also died a year after being injured in a confrontation with the suicide bombers.

Police captured Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, bloodied and injured, in the Boston suburb of Watertown, where he was hiding in a boat parked in a yard, hours after his brother’s death.

Tsarnaev had been involved in a shootout with police and was run over by his brother as he fled.

“I think we’re all still living through those tragic days of 10 years ago,” Bill Evans, the former Boston police commissioner, said recently.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was sentenced to death, and in recent years attention has focused on his attempt to avoid execution.