CHENNAI: Kenya's Augustine Ronoh claimed the top honours in the Chennai Marathon on Sunday. Ronoh, who won the Pune marathon, was unchallenged throughout his run and crossed the finish line in two hours, 14 minutes and five seconds.Uttar Pradesh's Santhosh Kumar, a regular in this event, finished second, a good 13 minutes behind.
Ethiopia's Moses Daiema, who was one of the favourites for the event, tried his best to match Ronoh, but was found wanting in the early stages of the race and had to settle for a disappointing third, finishing in two hours, 31 minutes and 20 seconds.
Ronoh later claimed that his goal was to stay near the head of the pack as much as possible. "My stamina is one of my plus points and if I could stay in the top three of four midway through the race, I could make a final push to come at the top," he said.
In the national segment Uttar Pradesh's Aravind Kumar won the national segment in full marathon ahead of Andhra Pradesh's Bipul Sahari and R Prakash of Karnataka.
Among the men from Tamil Nadu, G Lokaraja of Ooty was the fastest, clocking 2:27.26 and 2:32.57 respectively and G Kumar and T Rajesh came in second and third respectively.
In the half marathon, Ellam Singh of Uttarakhand topped the international/national grid while Raghu won the same among the Tamil athletes.
In the women's half-marathon segment, there was no stopping Uttar Pradesh' Sudha Singh, the winner of the previous edition as well. Bringing all her experience into play, she kept her nerves and accelerated at the right junctures to douse second-placed Mildred Chebosis' challenge.
The two of them ran neck-and-neck until about halfway through the race, when Sudha took advantage of her Kenyan rival's fatigue to edge her out in the closing stages. Just how close the race was can be gauged by the timing between the two runners with just one minute and eight seconds separating the top two.
"It was a very close affair, as she was always close on my trail. We were almost running parallel before I upped the ante in the final 200-300 metres on," said Sudha. "I noticed that she was having trouble with her stride. Maybe she was tiring, but then no complaints from me," she said with a smile.
Tamil Nadu's P Lakshmi came a distant third, clocking 1:33.43.
In the category for Tamil Nadu women, M Sudha snared the top honours with P Dhanalakshmi and B Shanthi coming in second and third.
In an interesting quirk of fate, the top three among the state women timed better than Lakshmi, the third place winner in the half marathon.
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