Kenya’s Geoffrey Mutai ran the fastest marathon in history to win the 115th Boston Marathon men’s title on Monday, while compatriot Caroline Kilel took the women’s crown.
Mutai won in an official time of 2 hours, 3 minutes, 2 seconds to defeat countryman Moses Mosop by four seconds and beat the marathon world-record time of 2 hours, 3 minutes, 59 seconds run in 2008 at Berlin by Haile Gebrselassie of Ethiopia.
“I knew I could run well, but the record was not on my mind,” Mutai said. “I was feeling OK. I was confident in myself. I was training so much.”
Mutai, 29, broke the Boston Marathon men’s record set by Kenyan Robert Kiprono Cheruiyot last year of 2 hours, 5 minutes, 52 seconds.
Elevation drop and point-to-point course layout differences from other marathons will preclude sanctioning of Mutai’s time as a world record, but despite a tailwind it will rank as the best under any conditions.
American Ryan Hall seized the early lead before a pack of 11 closed upon him just after the mid-point of the race and Ethiopia’s Bekana Daba led another surge that dropped half of the group.
When Mutai issued another challenge over the final five miles, only Mosop could counter. Mosop closed late, but could not overtake Mutai, whose prior personal best was a 2 hours, 4 minutes, 55 seconds from a runner-up effort last year at Rotterdam.
“I knew him, but I was confident,” Mutai said. “I tried to push myself. The wind was blowing on all sides all over the course. We were not facing the wind, but it was coming from all around us.”
Ethiopian Gebre Gebremariam, who won in New York in October last year in his marathon debut, was third in 2 hours, 4 minutes, 53 seconds, five seconds ahead of Hall in fourth.
With the exception of 2001, when South Korea’s Lee Bong-ju finished first, men from Kenya or Ethiopia have won every single Boston race since 1991.
Kilel won the women’s race in an official time of 2 hours, 22 minutes, 36 seconds, two seconds ahead of American Desiree Davila with Kenya’s Sharon Cherop third in 2 hours, 22 minutes, 42 seconds.
In a thrilling finish, Davila passed Kilel for the lead on the penultimate turn, but fell behind the Kenyan again as the finish line came in sight. Davila made a final surge to lead once more, but Kilel answered with 200m to go and seized the lead for good, collapsing as she crossed the finish line.
“The last 400 I tried to sprint and then I came to sprint again the last 200m,” Kilel said.
On a cool and breezy day, 26,964 runners from 90 nations ranging in age from 18 to 81 challenged the famed hills of the Boston suburbs for a total prize money purse of US$806,000, with US$150,000 going to the men’s and women’s winners.
Wakako Tsuchida set a world record of 1 hour, 34 minutes, 6 seconds to win her fifth consecutive Boston women’s wheelchair title and complete a wheelchair sweep for Japan, the first time since 2007 that competitors from the same nation took both crowns.
Tsuchida broke the old mark of American Jean Driscoll from the 1994 Boston Marathon by 16 seconds in defeating runner-up Shirley Reilly of the US by 6 minutes, 55 seconds. Driscoll was at the finish line to congratulate Tsuchida.
Also hoping to provide inspiration for Japan in the wake of last month’s earthquake and tsunami, Masazumi Soejima surged to the lead in the final 400m and won the men’s wheelchair race in 1 hour, 18 minutes, 50 seconds, edging runner-up Kurt Fearnley of Australia and nine-time winner Ernst Van Dyk of South Africa by a second.
“I tried really hard and that was my goal this year,” Soejima said through a translator. “With everything that has happened at home, I really wanted to work hard and win this race again with Wakako.”
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