Kenya’s Peres Jepchirchir, gold medalist at the Tokyo Olympics this summer, won the New York Marathon in 2 hours 22 minutes and 39 seconds on Sunday, November 7. Aged 28, she was five seconds ahead of her compatriot Viola Cheptoo and the Ethiopian Ababel Yeshaneh, 3e.
Jepchirchir succeeds another Kenyan, Joyciline Jepkosgei, who won in 2019, the 2020 edition having been canceled due to the Covid-19 pandemic. She is the first reigning Olympic gold medalist to win the prestigious New York event, which this year celebrates its 50e editing.
Nearly 30,000 runners participated in the event in a city where more than 34,000 people died from Covid-19 and the organizers were hoping for an anthology edition, like the one organized two months after the September 11 attacks.
Revenge for Albert Korir
On the men’s side, Kenyan Albert Korir won the event in 2 hours 8 minutes and 22 seconds. Second in the previous edition in 2019, he beat the Moroccan El Arraby and the Italian Eyob Faniel, 3e.
In search of a victory, even of the world record of the distance, for his very first participation in the Big Apple, the Ethiopian Kenenisa Bekele, him, missed his race.
