Mary Keitany wins third consecutive NY Marathon; Ghirmay Ghebreslassie youngest male winner
NEW YORK — Mary Keitany ran alone for 11 miles on Sunday to claim her third consecutive title at the New York City Marathon and redeemed a season where she finished ninth in the London Marathon and missed the Rio Olympic team. With the three-peat in New York (in 2:24:26), she joined nine-time champion Grete Waitz as the only female runners to achieve the feat.
“It means a lot to me,” Keitany said of her third straight victory. “It isn’t easy”
Asked if she might win four, five, or perhaps nine times like Waitz, she laughed and said, “Maybe yes.”
On the men’s side, 20-year-old Ghirmay Ghebreslassie of Eritrea became the youngest New York City winner and scored the third-fastest winning time in the 46-year history of the race (2:07:51).
For the first time since 1994, the U.S. had two runners on the podium: Abdi Abdirahman placed third in the men’s race at age 39, and Molly Huddle placed third in her marathon debut after setting the American record in 10,000 meters on the track at the Rio Olympics.
The key moment in the women’s race came at mile 10 where Keitany, fellow Kenyan Joyce Chepkirui, and Ethiopia’s Aselefech Mergia threw down a 5:06 mile to make it a three-woman show. After mile 15, it was all Keitany. The next finisher, Sally Kipyego of Kenya, finished nearly 3 minutes 35 seconds later, giving Keitany the 12th largest margin of victory in the women’s race.
Kipyego, a nine-time NCAA champion at Texas Tech, clocked 2:28:01 after dropping out last year at mile 23. Huddle placed third in 2:28:13 and plans to return to the track for one more season before trying to qualify for the 2020 U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials.
“I knew I’d be pretty ragged at the end,” Huddle said afterwards. “So I was just kind of surviving. I felt like I held it together. I’ll probably train more on harder terrain next time.”
The 2016 Olympic triathlon gold medalist Gwen Jorgensen, 30, stayed with the leaders through about six miles, before falling back and finishing 14th in a time of 2:41:01 in her marathon debut. She was the sixth-best American, behind Huddle, Neely Gracey (eighth), Sara Hall (ninth), Esther Atkins (11th), and Dot McMahan (12th).
The men’s race was assured a new champion when the 2015 winner Stanley Biwott of Kenya dropped out at mile 10 with a right calf injury. At mile 20, the 20-year-old marathon world champion Ghebreslassie tore away from Kenya’s Lucas Rotich and Ethiopia’s Lelisa Desisa by posting his second 4:48 mile in a row, and held on for victory in his New York City debut.
Ghebreslassie had also placed fourth at the Rio Olympic marathon this summer, and fourth at the London Marathon this spring where he ran his personal best 2:07:46.
But New York, he said, “was just like a championship to me.”
Earlier in the race, locals were thrilled to see two Americans in the lead pack through the first 12 miles (Abdirahman and Dathan Ritzenhein), but shortly thereafter, it became a three-man race, with Desisa, Ghebreslassie and Rotich leading the way. Ritzenhein, the 33-year-old Michigan resident, dropped out at mile 19 with a right heel injury. Desisa dropped out at mile 22.
Abdirahman finished third, in 2:11:23 but, he said, “I didn’t think I had it till I got to the park with 400 to 500 meters to go.”
In the women’s wheelchair race, Tatyana McFadden earned her fourth consecutive New York City victory by a decisive 1 minute, 44 seconds over runner-up, Manuela Schar of Switzerland. For the past four years, McFadden has also been undefeated in London, Boston, and Chicago.
“A vacation is definitely next,” she said. According to a biofeedback monitor, she said, “I was averaging 15 miles per hour today, which is amazing for the course with the climbs, downhill, and it was really quite windy.”
The men’s wheelchair finish came down to a photo finish in which Marcel Hug of Switzerland prevailed over five-time New York City champion Kurt Fearnley of Australia. It was Hug’s sixth marathon victory this year. Already, he had won Boston, London, Berlin, Chicago — as well as gold at the the Rio Paralympics.
PHOTOS: 2016 New York City Marathon