Nageeye hoped for more, even though he is the best Dutchman ever at the New York marathon

Open the New York Times of Monday, November 7, 2022, and it’s right there at the top of the fourteen-page supplement listing all the times of New York Marathon participants: 3. Nageeye, A. 02.10.31.

Never before has a Dutchman reached the podium in the most prestigious marathon on earth. Still, Abdi Nageeye was not completely satisfied. “I said to myself: number one or two, and I was third. I lost too much energy in the first half, I think.”

Of course Nageeye is aware of his performance on Sunday in the United States. “Sure, first major podium, biggest marathon in the world, but I wanted more,” says the marathon runner on the sidewalk in the middle of Manhattan.

The yellow taxis, cyclists with helmets on and red fire trucks with howling sirens speed through the skyscrapers again. A day before, the busy streets were still run by runners.

In spirited conditions of 21 degrees, the 42 kilometers and 195 meters meandered traditionally through the five boroughs of New York. The first kilometers through Staten Island and Brooklyn, Nageeye winner Evans Chebet was able to keep up, but on the big bridge over the East River from Queens to Manhattan and later The Bronx he had to let the Kenyan go.

At that moment the unleashed Brazilian Daniel Do Nascimento was already two minutes ahead of the pursuers. “It was a crazy match,” says Nageeye a day later. “A Brazilian boy ran like crazy and at some point you worry because the hole kept growing. And it’s not a boy who is bluffing.”

But when Do Nascimento suddenly slipped into a dixie along the course after a 28-mile run, it turned out that the Brazilian was in trouble. Chebet, the eventual number two Shura Kitata and Nageeye took their chance and moments later passed Do Nascimento, who had stumbled against the asphalt completely exhausted.

With the legs it was already pretty good at Nageeye on Monday. “The muscle pain is going reasonably well. I have little trouble, actually almost nothing. I have never felt so fresh after a marathon. That is strange, after such a hard one as yesterday.”

The final miles through Central Park, Nageeye was clearly having fun. He roused the audience in a characteristic way. The enthusiastic Americans along the side happily joined in.

“The crowd here is very different, it’s really crazy. We have crowds everywhere, they’re screaming and cheering you on. Everyone went crazy, so I just kept doing it until the finish.”

“I’m happy that I made it to the top three, because then I can just train for the next four, five months.” That wouldn’t have been possible otherwise? After the World Cup in July, a disappointing race in which Nageeye stepped out because of his ‘bouncing shoes’, the marathon runner says he thought about his task every training session. Not fun.

“Then you hope that the next game will go well and there will be a lot of pressure on yourself.”

“If it had gone wrong here, the weather would have been bad for eight months,” says Nageeye. “You run two or three marathons a year. If one goes bad, you just have to keep training and train well for the next four months. So it was also a relief for me that I just ran well. Like I made things right. “