Kenyan long-dis­tance run­ner Alex Eke­sa pro­duced an­oth­er bril­liant per­for­mance on Sun­day morn­ing, suc­cess­ful­ly de­fend­ing his ti­tle and shav­ing sec­onds off his own course record at the Bafas­ports Mid­night Marathon.

​Run­ning un­der the glow of the Moth­er’s Day ear­ly morn­ing hours, Eke­sa stamped his au­thor­i­ty on the race from the open­ing stages. Af­ter com­plet­ing the first lap around the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah in Port-of-Spain, he nev­er re­lin­quished his lead, cross­ing the fin­ish line at the NCC Foy­er in two hours, 28 min­utes and 45.2 sec­onds. The per­for­mance nar­row­ly eclipsed his 2025 record of 2:28:46.

​De­spite the phys­i­cal toll of the gru­elling 26.2-mile course, Eke­sa re­mained hum­ble in vic­to­ry, ac­knowl­edg­ing the per­son­al hur­dles he over­came to com­pete.

​“It’s re­al­ly a priv­i­lege for me and I’m very grate­ful that I came here to­day (yes­ter­day),” said Eke­sa af­ter the race. “Re­gard­less of all the chal­lenges that I’ve been fac­ing, be­ing here to­day (yes­ter­day) in this race is an­oth­er op­por­tu­ni­ty for me to show­case what I’m ca­pa­ble of do­ing and what I re­al­ly love do­ing.”

​Eke­sa, who al­so holds ti­tles for the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies Sport and Phys­i­cal Ed­u­ca­tion Cen­tre (UWI SPEC) Half Marathon and the T&T In­ter­na­tion­al Marathon, not­ed that his con­nec­tion to the lo­cal crowds has grown be­yond sport.

“Trinidad to me has be­come like home,” he added. “The run­ning com­mu­ni­ty and the fam­i­ly here have be­come part of me and I’ve be­come part of them. I’m very grate­ful for all the love and sup­port that I’ve been giv­en here in Trinidad.”

​Fin­ish­ing sec­ond over­all in the men’s cat­e­go­ry was T&T’s Col­in Pereira in 3:13:03.2, while his com­pa­tri­ot Keron Rag­birs­ingh round­ed off the podi­um in third with 3:13:14.7.

​In the women’s di­vi­sion, Colom­bia’s Pal­me­nia Agude­lo mir­rored Eke­sa’s suc­cess by de­fend­ing her crown. Though she fin­ished just shy of her per­son­al course record, her time of 3:01:22.4 was more than enough to se­cure a com­mand­ing vic­to­ry over run­ner-up Christi­na Lau­rent (3:13:23.7) of Guade­loupe, while Pana­man­ian Maria Bar­rera com­plet­ed the podi­um in 3:37:54.6.

​The Mid­night Marathon course once again test­ed every ounce of dis­ci­pline and re­silience from par­tic­i­pants. Start­ing from the NCC Foy­er at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, run­ners first looped around the Sa­van­nah be­fore head­ing down Dun­don­ald Street and on­to the Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route. Ath­letes then jour­neyed east to­ward Dins­ley be­fore turn­ing back to­ward Port-of-Spain and even­tu­al­ly re­turn­ing to the Sa­van­nah fin­ish line.

​Run­ning con­cur­rent­ly with the marathon was the in­creas­ing­ly pop­u­lar Eki­den Re­lay, which brought an added lay­er of ex­cite­ment and team­work to the event as teams com­bined strat­e­gy, pac­ing, and en­durance across six legs cov­er­ing the same route.

​Claim­ing top ho­n­ours in the re­lay di­vi­sion was PPF Fire in a win­ning com­bined time of 3:13:04.0. Mall Crawlers se­cured sec­ond over­all in 3:38:43.9, while Team Poon fin­ished third in 3:44:47.3.

​The re­lay for­mat chal­lenged ath­letes across six unique stages, be­gin­ning with a fast-paced 5K open­ing leg from the Sa­van­nah to Port-of-Spain.

From there, run­ners tack­led a de­mand­ing 10K stretch from Port-of-Spain to Barataria be­fore hand­ing over for a short­er but in­tense 5K leg from Barataria to Tu­na­puna.

​The fourth seg­ment test­ed en­durance once more with a 10K jour­ney from Tu­na­puna to Curepe, be­fore run­ners ac­cel­er­at­ed through a 5K stage from Curepe to San Juan.

The fi­nal 8K clos­ing leg from San Juan back to the Sa­van­nah brought teams home in dra­mat­ic fash­ion as spec­ta­tors wel­comed com­peti­tors through the fin­ish gantry in the ear­ly hours of Sun­day morn­ing.

​Be­yond the rac­ing it­self, the Mid­night Marathon at­mos­phere once again proved to be one of the event’s defin­ing fea­tures. From the pre-race aer­o­bathon-style work­out to hy­dra­tion sta­tions, dou­bles ven­dors, Star­bucks cof­fee, live steel­pan mu­sic, and spon­sor ac­ti­va­tions through­out the ath­letes’ vil­lage, the event de­liv­ered an ex­pe­ri­ence that ex­tend­ed well be­yond the com­pe­ti­tion on the road.

Bafas­ports al­so praised the col­lab­o­ra­tive ef­fort that made the event pos­si­ble, in­clud­ing the sup­port of the Po­lice Ser­vice, the De­fence Force, the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion, spon­sors, vol­un­teers, and the wider run­ning com­mu­ni­ty.

​With the Mid­night Marathon con­clud­ed, Bafas­ports or­gan­is­ers are al­ready look­ing to­ward the Ma­yaro Co­conut Beach Run in Au­gust and the Mag­dale­na Grand Mid­night 10K lat­er this year, con­tin­u­ing their pledge to “make run­ning fun again one stride at a time.”