Dhe Olympic champion had to assert herself against two competitors in a long sprint through Central Park to win the New York Marathon and thus 100,000 dollars in prize money on Sunday. Since the victory of Frank Shorter, the Olympic champion in Munich in 1972, the success of the 28-year-old Peres Jepchirchir from Kenya has been the first victory of a marathon runner in an autumn marathon of the same year in which he or she achieved the Olympic victory.
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But the fiftieth edition of the race by the Big Apple, which was canceled last year due to the corona pandemic, was much more. Runners and their audience in the five districts returned to the streets of the city in the sun on a cold day, i.e. ideal conditions, where more than 30,000 people died of the virus. The number of participants had been reduced by forty percent to 30,000 runners.
After 2:22:39 hours, the winner was at the finish, the third-fastest time in history and just nine seconds below the course record. On August 7th, Peres Jepchirchir had won the marathon of the Olympic Games of Tokyo in Sapporo in 2:27:20 hours. Viola Cheptoo, five years ago Olympic participant over 1500 meters for Kenya, only needed four seconds more on her debut on the 42.195 kilometers and finished second ahead of Ethiopian Ababel Yeshaneh, who was eight seconds behind.
At the finish she was expected by her brother Bernard Lagat, the former world champion in 1500 and 5000 meters, who has been an American citizen since his studies. He is now 46 years old and a television commentator. Jepchirchir waited with the final sprint until about 800 meters before the finish. “I know myself and my sprint because I train it in Kenya,” she said. “I knew this was the victory.” With her superior sprint, she won the world championship in the half marathon for the second time in Gdynia last year.
The men, on the other hand, ran an elimination race. Out of the chasing group, the Kenyan Albert Korir surprisingly ran to victory in 2:08:22 hours. He was able to leave the favorites Kenenisa Bekele from Ethiopia and Kibiwott Kandie from Kenya behind. One is a three-time Olympic champion and winner of 16 world championships on track and cross, the other has the current world record for the half marathon (58:32 minutes).
Together with Bekele and Kandie as well as with the Olympic runner-up Abdi Nageeye from the Netherlands, Korir ran after the outliers Mohamed El Aaraby and Eyob Faniel with a large deficit. But he was able to catch up with them with Kandie and overtook them. Kandie later broke in and only crossed the finish line in ninth place. El Aaraby and Faniel crossed the finish line in second (2:09:16) and third (2:09:52). Nageeye was fifth in 2:11:39, Bekele was sixth in 2:12:52.
Six weeks ago in Berlin, Bekele had taken six minutes less and finished third – on the track where he missed the world record of two-time Olympic champion Eliud Kipchoge by just two seconds in 2019. In the coming year, he said, he will have made up his training deficit and will try, like Kipchoge, to run the marathon distance in less than two hours. In New York he confirmed that when he was almost forty he still wanted to win a big marathon.
Albert Korir, who finished second in New York in 2019, was the only runner to run the second half of the marathon faster than the first. “It wasn’t an easy race, but I enjoyed it,” he said afterwards. His greatest successes were previously the victories at the Vienna and Houston marathons.
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