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

Patriots legend Rob Gronkowski waited at the finish line for the 30,000 runners taking part in Monday’s Boston Marathon.

All 50 US 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 in Boston.

The action kicked off around 9am ET with the men’s and women’s wheelchair race before the elite runners hit the roads half an hour later.

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

Waiting at the end of the world’s oldest and most prestigious annual marathon was former NFL tight end Gronkowski. 

The 34-year-old spent nearly a decade in New England, winning three Super Bowls alongside Tom Brady with the Patriots.

Gronkowski was named ‘grand marshal’ of the race, having won the 2024 Patriots’ Award. He was seen holding the trophy – and chucking a football – early on Monday morning, before appearing at the red Sox game later in the day to throw the first pitch.

‘We couldn´t ask for a better day,’ he said, before climbing into an electric car that carried him along the course. ‘The city of Boston always comes out to support, no matter the event. The weather is perfection, the energy is popping.’

Security was tight in Boston, with this year’s race marking 11 years since the tragic bombing that killed three people and injured hundreds more.  

The Patriots’ Day race also fell on One Boston Day, when the city remembers the victims of the 2013 tragedy. At the finish line on Boylston Street, bagpipes accompanied Govenor Maura Healey, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu and members of the victims’ families as they laid a pair of wreaths at the sites of the explosions.

In the early action, Britain’s Eden Rainbow-Cooper won the women’s wheelchair race, while Switzerland’s Marcel Hug righted himself after crashing into a barrier before coasting to a sixth victory in the men’s race – in a course-record time.

Hug already had a four-minute lead about 18 miles in when reached the landmark firehouse turn in Newton. He spilled into the fence, flipping sideways, but quickly got back on track.

He finished in 1 hour, 15 minutes, 33 seconds – breaking his previous record by 1:33 to win his 14th straight major marathon and his 24th overall.

The festivities began around 6am, when race director Dave McGillivray sent about 30 Massachusetts National Guard members off. 

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

Near the finish on Boylston Street, officials observed the anniversary of the 2013 bombing that killed three and wounded hundreds more.

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

Among the dead were Lu Lingzi, a 23-year-old Boston University graduate student from China; Krystle Campbell, a 29-year-old restaurant manager from Medford, Massachusetts; and 8-year-old Martin Richard, who had gone 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 dead in his car. Boston Police Officer Dennis Simmonds also died a year after he was wounded in a confrontation with the bombers.

Police captured a bloodied and wounded Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in the Boston suburb of Watertown, where he was hiding in a boat parked in a backyard, hours after his brother died. 

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

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was sentenced to death and much of the attention, in recent years, has been around his bid to avoid being executed.

The bombing not only unified Boston — ‘Boston Strong’ became the city’s rallying cry — but inspired many in the running community and prompted scores of those impacted by the terror attack to run the marathon.