Zersenay Tadese took 21 seconds from the men’s championship record as he won the IAAF/EDF Energy-backed event in Birmingham. The Eritrean’s time of 59min 35sec brought him a record fourth successive global road-running title, a $30,000 prize, and completed a unique match set of world championship medals this year.
He had won cross-country bronze in Amman, and 10k track silver in Berlin.
Mary Keitany ran the second fastest women’s time ever, 66:36, missing the world best by 11 seconds. The Kenyan left believing she’d won a $50,000 bonus for a world 15,000m best of 46:51, but the first part of the route was excessively downhill, so that will be withheld.
The hilly nature of the latter stages made no such impact on the overall distance. Keitany said she could have broken the half marathon world mark had her heels not been repeatedly clipped by her Ethiopian rival, Aberu Kebede, who took third.
“That’s why I decided to disappear [up the road after 10k]” she said, “but of course, I could have got the record if there had been somebody to race with longer.”
Keitany’s success was remarkable less than 24 hours after having been trapped in a lift for 50 minutes before being freed by firemen. “It was very hot, and I was sweating,” she said. “I was worried. I thought I’d be dehydrated, so I drank lots of water afterwards.”
Nine people were trapped and one had a panic attack and required oxygen. Her husband, US team manager Glen Latimer, said: “It was like the black hole of Calcutta.” Keitany’s Italian coach, Gabriele Nicola, believes that in the prevailing wet, windy conditions, “this is the true world record. We regret Paula was unable to run. It would have been a good chance to have gone head to head with her.”
The 27-year-old Keitany gave birth to a son, Jared, 16 months ago, and plans her marathon debut next autumn, said Nicola. “Our target is the podium in the marathon in London 2012. I don’t currently see any woman, other than Mary, who has the possibility to get close to Radcliffe’s world record.”
Tadesse was supported by Shettleston athletes – former Eritrean team-mates from the 2007 world cross-country event in Edinburgh who were granted political asylum. They’d helped win the West cross-country relays for Shettleston on Saturday.
American Dathan Ritzenheim (another lift victim) was third – first non-African born athlete to medal in this event since 1996.
The UK team was a dismal fourteenth, but Scotland’s Andrew Lemoncello came of age, fastest Brit by more than a minute and fourth best European, 26th with 63:03.
He has a 61:52 on a downhill course. “But this is my official best,” said the Fifer. “I got great crowd support out there,” he said, but gesticulating to the Union flag on his vest, added: “They kept shouting ‘Come on England!’ “But I thought if this is what it’s like for a half marathon, what will it be like for a marathon on the streets of London in 2012 – six deep all round the course? And then come Scotland, for the Commonwealths two years later, it’ll be the same. That helps when you’re struggling on the course, and will sustain me on bad days in training.”
This was the sixth best ever by a Scot and fastest since 1993 (Peter Fleming, 62:52, in Glasgow). Only Phil Wicks among UK-born athletes has run faster since 2000, and Lemoncello beat him yesterday by more than two minutes.
Further Scottish success came in the open race which had more than 12,000 starters. City of Glasgow’s GB internationalist Susan Partridge collected £1000 for victory in 72.50.
This time was surpassed by only one of the five-strong GB women’s team (Clare Hallessy, 72:14) which placed seventh in the world race.
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