Like all of us, Sammy Wanjiru is getting older and slower. But shed no tears for the Kenyan marathoner.
He's only 23, to begin with. And while his 2:06:24 in Chicago this morning was slower than his course record 2:05:41 last year, it was still good enough for the win ($75,000) and a near-guaranteed top placing in the 2009-10 World Marathon Majors contest ($500,000).
And, oh, yeah, Wanjiru might have run one of the greatest marathons of all time. That's what we said two years ago with his stunning Beijing Olympic victory. But that one was relatively comfortable at the end. Today, on the warmish, sun-streaked streets of Chicago, Wanjiru had to fight every inch of the way in an epic battle with Ethiopian Tsegaye Kebede, who finished second in 2:06:43.
Several times it appeared that the hard-charging Kebede had dropped him. Each time, Wanjiru regrouped and forced himself back to the front. Call it the mark of a champion. Over the last 800 meters, he unleashed a sprint so long and hard it's hard to imagine any other marathoner, ever, could have matched it.
Most amazing of all, as the marathon began this morning at 7:30 a.m. from spectacular Grant Park on the Chicago lakefront, no one was picking Wanjiru to win. He had dropped out of his last two races, including the London Marathon in April. His manager suggested that he wasn't in good shape. He himself reported that a stomach flu had cost him a week of training just two weeks ago. And he faced a daunting trio of tough, aggressive young Ethiopians.
The toughest of these, Kebede, has run four 2:05's in the last three years. Short, forward-leaning, pumping his arms up to his shoulders, he three times broke away from Wanjiru in the last five miles. And Wanjiru didn't like the way things were going. "I was losing hope," he admitted. "I thought I was going to finish second. But I like the hot weather, and when we got closer to the finish line, I knew my final kick would favor me."
"I tried to break him several times," said Kebede, winner at London in April. "I tried and tried to win. It's a chance, you know? Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't."
Wanjiru's manager, Federico Rosa, longtime advisor to great Kenyan marathoners, put his runner's effort in the sharpest, most colorful terms:
"It was the greatest marathon race I have ever seen, and the biggest surprise. It was a total shock. You can't imagine how bad things looked in Kenya 10 to 12 days ago. I thought he would maybe finish second or third, or he might have to drop out. At the Olympics, he was sure to win because he was so fit. But here, where the field was maybe better than the Olympics, he was not ready to run his best. In Italy, we have an expression: We say a runner like this has very big balls. After what we saw today, the world record is just around the corner." (Article continues, below.)
How fast can Wanjiru run?
Rosa, smiling broadly: "Fast. Really, really fast."
Twenty-year-old Ethiopian Feyisa Lilesa finished third in 2:08:10. Last April in Rotterdam, he ran 2:05:23. Kebede is 23, the same age as Wanjiru. Both of them are now wizened veterans. The age of young, super-fast marathoners is upon us.
Boston's new course record holder, Robert Kiprono Cheruiyot, finished sixth in 2:09:28. The top American, Jason Hartmann, improved his personal record from 2:12:09 to 2:11:06, and added the top-American-at-Chicago laurels to his win in the the U.S. Marathon Championships in Twin Cities last fall. Other American men mostly fell short of their high goals. The weather wasn't brutal but it was warmer than optimal.
"You'll have to ask the athletes if they could have run better on another day," said Race Director Carey Pinkowski. "But I'd say, in cooler weather, sure."
There had been talk, pre-race, that the pacesetters might try to hit the halfway point in 1:01:50 to set up a possible world record. After a modest begining (5-K in 15:01), the pace quickened enough for the leaders to reach 13.1 miles in 1:02:35. This put them well within reach of Wanjiru's 2009 course record, 2:05:41, but any world-record dreams were shattered. As the miles continued, the increasing warmth and sunshine gradually took their toll.
When the last pacesetter dropped out at 30-K, the race was on among Wanjiru, Kebede, and Lilesa. The mile splits quickened for a time — 4:40, 4:43, 4:41 — but this was not a tempo that could be carried to the end. Instead, the pace slowed and the head-to-head competition came to the fore. Kebede was ever the aggressor, several times seeming to have gapped Wanjiru. But the wily Kenyan allowed himself to recover, and then slowly moved back up to his rival. Punch-counterpunch. Punch-counterpunch.
"It's like Ali-Frazier out there," said TV commentator Toni Reavis from a nearby motorcycle.
A part of Wanjiru's incredible resume is a 13:12 for 5,000 meters on the track that he ran at age 17 as a student in Japan. He used that leg speed to bury Kebede in the twisting last 600 yards, responding to the dense, cheering crowds.
"I have run here before, and I knew the course well," he said. "I think that was a big advantage for me today."
A year after that youthful 5,000, Wanjiru ran a world junior record for 10,000 meters (26:41.75) followed shortly by an open world record of 59:17 in the half-marathon. He was 18 at that point. In the next several years, he improved his half-marathon best to 58:33 and then 58:31. In late 2007, he entered and won his first marathon, Fukuoka, in 2:06:39. He placed second in the 2008 London Marathon, but then dominated the hot, humid Beijing Olympic Marathon to win in 2:06:32 — almost three minutes faster than Carlos Lopes's Olympic record. Many experts and observers marked it down as the greatest marathon ever run, given the nasty conditions. Last year, he won both London and Chicago, setting course records in both. At London, he improved his personal best to 2:05:10.
This year things seemed to be headed south. He had back and knee injuries early, and dropped out of the London race. Then came whispers from Kenya that he was no longer taking care of business. In Chicago today, Wanjiru turned the story around. Now it's back to the question that has been following him for the last three years:
Can he break the world record, Haile Gebrselassie's 2:03:59? How fast can he run anyway? It will be fun to follow that question to its conclusion.
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