Showing posts with label Boston Marathon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Boston Marathon. Show all posts
Tuesday, 21 April 2026
Tuesday, 22 April 2025
LOKEDI BREAKS BOSTON MARATHON COURSE RECORD, KORIR TAKES MEN'S RACE
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| Maddie Meyer//Getty Images |
BOSTON — A rider dressed as Paul Revere eased his horse up to the Boston Marathon finish line and proclaimed, “The runners are coming.”
And down Boylston Street they came.
In record time. With a historic family first. And even “The Star-Spangled Banner” got some air time as the race and the region commemorated the 250th anniversary of the first shots fired in the American Revolution.
Sharon Lokedi of Kenya broke the Boston Marathon course record by more than 2 1/2 minutes on Monday, outkicking two-time defending champion Hellen Obiri a year after losing to her in one of the closest finishes in race history.
Fellow Kenyan John Korir recovered from a starting line fallto join his brother as a race champion — the first relatives to win the world’s oldest and most prestigious annual marathon in a history that dates to 1897.
On a day that also marked the 50th anniversary of Bob Hall’s pioneering wheelchair race, Marcel Hug of Switzerland claimed his eighth victory and Susannah Scaroni of the United States took the women’s title.
“I always feel emotional when the national anthem is played,” said Scaroni, who won in 2023 but couldn’t defend her title last year because of an injury. “And to have ours played on this amazing, historic anniversary gives me goosebumps.”
Lokedi finished in 2 hours, 17 minutes, 22 seconds to claim the $150,000 first prize and another $50,000 bonus for breaking the course record of 2:19:59 set by Buzunesh Deba in 2014. A year after sprinting to an 8 second victory, Obiri was 19 seconds back in her attempt to become the first woman to win three straight since Fatuma Roba in 1999.
“Where she passed me last year, I passed her this year,” Lokedi said with a laugh. “I didn’t even believe. I kept looking back and thinking, ‘Where is she?’ I’m just so grateful to her for pushing me all the way through.”
Six months after winning on Chicago’s flatter course, Korir finished in 2:04:45 — the second-fastest winning time in Boston history as the runners took advantage of perfect marathon weather to conquer the 26.2 miles from Hopkinton to Boston’s Copley Square.
And he did it despite getting tripped up from behind near the start and falling. He got up to rejoin the lead pack at the rear.
“What came to my mind was should I stay down, or should I (get) up and go?” he said. “Something told me to (get) up and go, and that everything will be OK. … And everything went away.”
Korir’s race bib fell off and he tucked it into his running tights, pulling it out as he sprinted to the finish line. Waiting to congratulate him: 2012 Boston winner Wesley Korir, his older brother.
Although the race has been won by a pair of unrelated John Kelleys and two different Robert Cheruiyots, the Korirs are the first brothers to have won.
“He explained to be tough and believe in yourself,” said John Korir, who finished fourth and ninth in his two previous Boston attempts. “So I believed in myself and I followed his advice.”
Conner Mantz of Provo, Utah, finished fourth after losing a three-way sprint to the finish with Alphonce Felix Simbu of Tanzania, who finished second, and Cybrian Kotut of Kenya, who was third.
Yalemzerf Yehualaw of Ethiopia was third in the women’s race. Jess McClain of Phoenix was the top American, in seventh place; 2018 winner Des Linden, who had announced she would retire from competitive running, won the masters division and was 17th overall.
When she crossed the finish line, the other American women bowed to her in tribute.
A field of 30,000 left Hopkinton on Monday morning for Boston’s Back Bay, where riders in Revolutionary War garb — accompanied by a fife and drum playing “Yankee Doodle” — rode down Boylston Street in a reenactment of Paul Revere’s ride.
The ceremony came to a temporary halt when the horse was spooked by the finish line decal on the street and pulled up. The actor portraying the colonial silversmith and patriot had to hop off and walk the last few steps himself as the small early crowd laughed and clapped.
- Jimmy Golen, Associated Press
Monday, 21 April 2025
Tuesday, 16 April 2024
ETHIOPIA'S SISAY LEMMA WINS BOSTON MARATHON IN RUNAWAY, KENYA'S HELLEN OBIRI REPEATS IN WOMEN'S RACE
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| Sisay Lemma. AP Photo |
BOSTON (AP) — Sisay Lemma scorched the first half of the Boston Marathon course on Monday, setting a record pace to build a lead of more than half of a mile.
Then the weather heated up, and the 34-year-old Ethiopian slowed down.
After running alone for most of the morning, Lemma held on down Boylston Street to finish in 2 hours, 6 minutes, 17 seconds — the 10th fastest time in the race's 128-year history. Lemma dropped to the pavement and rolled onto his back, smiling, after crossing the finish line.
“Until halfway through I was running very hard and very good. But after that it was getting harder and harder,” said Lemma, who failed to finish twice and came in 30th in three previous Boston attempts. “Several times I’ve dropped out of the race before. But today I won, so I’ve redeemed myself.”
Hellen Obiri defended her title, outkicking Sharon Lokedi on Boylston Street to finish in 2:27:37 and win by eight seconds; two-time Boston champion Edna Kiplagat completed the Kenyan sweep, finishing another 36 seconds back.
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| Hellen OBIRI. AP Photo |
Obiri also won New York last fall and is among the favorites for the Paris Olympics. She is the sixth woman to win back-to-back in Boston and the first since Catherine “the Great” Ndereba won four in six years from 2000 to '05.
“Defending the title was not easy. Since Boston started, it’s only six women. So I said, ‘Can I be one of them? If you want to be one of them, you have to work extra hard,'” she said. “And I’m so happy because I’m now one of them. I’m now in the history books in Boston."
Lemma, the 2021 London champion, arrived in Boston with the fastest time in the field — just the fourth person ever to break 2:02:00 when he won in Valencia last year. And he showed it on the course Monday, separating himself from the pack in Ashland and opening a lead of more than half of a mile.
Lemma ran the first half in 1:00:19 — 99 seconds faster than Geoffrey Mutai's course record pace in 2011, when his 2:03:02 was the fastest marathon in history. Fellow Ethiopian Mohamed Esa closed the gap through the last few miles, finishing second by 41 seconds; two-time defending champion Evans Chebet was third.
Each winner collected a gilded olive wreath and $150,000 from a total prize purse that topped $1 million for the first time.
On a day when sunshine and temperatures rising into the mid-60s left the runners reaching for water — to drink, and to dump over their heads — Obiri ran with an unusually large lead pack of 15 through Brookline before breaking away in the final few miles.
Emma Bates of Boulder, Colorado, finished 12th — her second straight year as the top American. Again, she found herself leading the race through the 30-kilometer mark, slapping hands as she ran past the Wellesley College students chanting her name before fading on the way out of Heartbreak Hill.
“I thought last year was crazy loud, but this year surpassed that completely,” Bates said. “It was such a nice day for the spectators. Not so nice for the runners; it was pretty hot.”
CJ Albertson of Fresno, California, was the top American man in seventh, his second top-10 finish.
Switzerland's Marcel Hug righted himself after crashing into a barrier when he took a turn too fast and still coasted to a course record in the men's wheelchair race. It was his seventh Boston win and his 14th straight major marathon victory.
Hug already had a four-minute lead about 18 miles in when he reached the landmark firehouse turn in Newton, where the course heads onto Commonwealth Avenue on its way to Heartbreak Hill. He spilled into the fence, flipping sideways onto his left wheel, but quickly restored himself.
“It was my fault,” Hug said. “I had too much weight, too much pressure from above to my steering, so I couldn’t steer.”
Hug finished in 1:15:33, winning by 5:04 and breaking his previous course record by 1:33. Britain's Eden Rainbow-Cooper, 22, won the women's wheelchair race in 1:35:11 for her first major marathon victory; she is the third-youngest woman to win the Boston wheelchair race.
The otherwise sleepy New England town of Hopkinton celebrated its 100th anniversary as the starting line for the world's oldest and most prestigious marathon, sending off a field of 17 former champions and nearly 30,000 other runners on its way. Near the finish on Boylston Street 26.2 miles (42.2 kilometers) away, officials observed the anniversary of the 2013 bombing that killed three and wounded hundreds more.
Sunny skies and minimal wind greeted the runners, with temperatures in the 40s as they gathered in Hopkinton rising to 69 as the stragglers crossed the finish line in the afternoon. As the field went through Natick, the fourth of eight cities and towns on the route, athletes splashed water on themselves to cool off.
“We couldn’t ask for a better day," former New England Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski, the grand marshal, said before climbing into an electric car that would carry him along the course. "The city of Boston always comes out to support, no matter the event. The weather is perfection, the energy is popping.”
The festivities began around 6 a.m., when race director Dave McGillivray sent about 30 Massachusetts National Guard members off. Lt. Col. Paula Reichert Karsten, one of the marchers, said she wanted to be part of a “quintessential Massachusetts event.”
The start line was painted to say “100 years in Hopkinton,” commemorating the 1924 move from Ashland to Hopkinton to conform to the official Olympic Marathon distance. The announcer welcomed the gathering crowds to the “sleepy little town of Hopkinton, 364 days of the year.”
“In Hopkinton, it’s probably the coolest thing about the town," said Maggie Agosto, a 16-year-old resident who went to the start line with a friend to watch the race.
The annual race on Patriots' Day, the state holiday that commemorates the start of the Revolutionary War, also fell on One Boston Day, when the city remembers the victims of the 2013 finish line bombings. Before the race, bagpipes accompanied Gov. Maura Healey, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu and members of the victims' families as they laid a pair of wreaths at the sites of the explosions.
- JIMMY GOLEN
Wednesday, 19 April 2023
BOSTON MARATHON #2 GABRIEL GEAY WITH PRESIDENT JAKAYA KIKWETE
Boston Marathon number 2 Gabriel Geay is flanked by former United Republic of Tanzania President Dr. Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete (on the left of Geay) and on the right is Zanzibar's Miniater of State in the Presidents Office - Finance and Economics, Hon. Saada Mkuya.
Tuesday, 18 April 2023
Monday, 17 April 2023
BOSTON MARATHON PROFESSIONAL FIELD – MEN’S OPEN DIVISION
^ signifies Boston Marathon Champion
*signifies Masters (40+) athlete
Saturday, 15 October 2022
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