Last year's win­ner, Mark Chep­ses of Kenya, will re­turn to de­fend his crown at this year's 35th edi­tion of the T&T In­ter­na­tion­al Marathon (TTIM), sched­uled for Jan­u­ary 29 from St Mary's Junc­tion in Freeport to Port-of-Spain.

He will head a large com­pet­i­tive field that will com­prise coun­try­men Stan­ley Sang and Er­ick Kiprono, vet­er­an Cur­tis Cox, who won in 2015, ris­ing tal­ent from T&T Kieve (Mag­ic­man) Gib­son and Joe Church of Penn­syl­va­nia, USA, who is ex­pect­ed to be an in­trigu­ing en­trant, among many oth­ers.

Among the women, last year's fe­male cham­pi­on Leah Ki­gen and 2015 fe­male cham­pi­on Truphena Bus­ieni have al­ready tak­en steps to go af­ter their sec­ond ti­tle by means of reg­is­ter­ing, but like their male coun­ter­parts, they are ex­pect­ed to face stiff com­pe­ti­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly from T&T's Tonya Nero, who has been hunt­ing down the elu­sive ti­tle for many years.

On­ly last month, Nero stormed past two Cana­di­ans to claim the win at the Bar­ba­dos' Half Marathon and she is promis­ing to do her best come Jan­u­ary 29.

Apart from Nero, Chris­tine Reg­is, the coun­try's lead­ing fe­male in 2015 and 2016 at the TTIMs, will al­so at­tempt to fly the flag high. Al­so in the race will be Karen Samuel of Great Britain and Sidy Di­al­lo of France, two oth­er women to watch.

En­tries from the Caribbean Re­gion in­clude run­ners from St Lu­cia and St Eu­sta­tius in the 5K with Wins­bert Sylvester (St Lu­cia).

Bri­an Lewis, the T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee pres­i­dent will send the run­ners on their way from 5 am while the slow run­ners and walk­ers will set off at 3.30am. Lewis is ex­pect­ed to con­tin­ue the pro­mo­tion of his theme #10Gold24, to re­in­force his com­mit­tee's pre­dic­tion of the coun­try win­ning 10 Gold medals at an Olympic Games by 2024.

Mean­while, the TTIM Marathon Vil­lage will be at the fin­ish line and will ex­ude life af­ter the race. Fol­low­ing the suc­cess­ful stag­ing of the Marathon Re­lay in 2016, over 35 teams have al­ready signed up to com­pete at the 2017 Re­lay over the same Marathon course.

The TTIM week­end will be jump start­ed on Jan­u­ary 28 with the 5K at the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah from 4 pm. Port-of-Spain May­or Joel Mar­tinez will start the event.

Her Ex­cel­len­cy Reema Car­mona, who con­test­ed the event last year, has al­ready agreed to re­turn this year for the Pres­i­dent's House team.

On­line reg­is­tra­tion for the events is open un­til 21 Jan­u­ary at ttmarathon.com. Reg­is­ter cor­po­rate teams and clubs for this year's re­lay and in­di­vid­u­als are al­so in­vit­ed to reg­is­ter for the marathon and 5K. (WA)