Kenya is known as one of the prime nations for long distance runners. However in the women’s Marathon competitions at Olympic games they never managed to win the gold medal. Until now! In the women’s Marathon last Sunday in Rio de Janeiro the 31 year-old Jemima Sumgong finished first at the Sambódromo.
Weather conditions were not easy for the runners with sun, humidity and temperatures close to 27° Celsius (80° Fahrenheit). Over 20 runners dropped out of the race, some due to these conditions. As most of the main protagonists were together after 5k the front pack shrunk to 13 at the 9km mark. The leading group varied just a bit until the half way mark with some runners falling back and some others catching up. Mazuronak was the runner speeding up between 20km and 30km into the race which split the front-runners leaving some behind.
The big split happened around the 36km mark when Kirwa increased the pace and only Sumgong and Dibaba were able to follow. At the end it was Jemima Sumgong who made the race finishing 9 seconds in front of Kirwa and 26 seconds in front of Dibaba. After three straight silver medals Kenya’s women finally won gold in an Olympic Marathon.
Long distance running is often dominated by African born runners. The top 10 at the 2016 Olympic Games features just three runners from Africa, one European, three Asian and the entire team of US runners. Flanagans 6th place lead the US squad with Linden in 7th and Cragg in 9th place reversing the result of the US Olympic trials.
In this years Olympic Marathon three sets of twins finished the race. Anna and Lisa Hahner from Germany came in just one second apart. Estonia even started triplets but only Lily and Leila Luik managed to finish the race. The best ranked twins were Hye-song and Hye-gyong Kim from North Korea crossing the finish line hand in hand in 10th and 11th place.
The following table shows the complete results (Source: Wikipedia)
MOTIVATION
HEALTHY RUNNING
IMPROVE & ACHIEVE
