by Brett Larner
Two-time Madrid Marathon champ Ezekiel Kiptoo Chebii (Kenya) scored his first Japanese win, outkicking 2013 winner and Daegu World Championships silver medalist Vincent Kipruto (Kenya) on the last lap of the track to win the Lake Biwa Mainichi Marathon in 2:09:06.
チェビー選手🏃🏻
優勝おめでとうございます🎉#びわ湖毎日マラソンpic.twitter.com/vJGJSkuEw9 — りさ (@piiice7) March 5, 2017
In most ways it was a pretty garden-variety race, pacers taking it through 30 km right around 3:00 / km with most of the bigger overseas and a massive but steadily dwindling pack of Japanese men in tow. After the next-generation breakthrough in Tokyo last week hopes were high with a large number of current and past Hakone Ekiden stars in the field for their first or second marathons the same would happen here. It was almost a foregone conclusion that somebody would be running under 2:09 in pursuit of a place on the London World Championships team, the consensus seeming to be that it would take better than Yuki Kawauc…
Two-time Madrid Marathon champ Ezekiel Kiptoo Chebii (Kenya) scored his first Japanese win, outkicking 2013 winner and Daegu World Championships silver medalist Vincent Kipruto (Kenya) on the last lap of the track to win the Lake Biwa Mainichi Marathon in 2:09:06.
チェビー選手🏃🏻
優勝おめでとうございます🎉#びわ湖毎日マラソンpic.twitter.com/vJGJSkuEw9 — りさ (@piiice7) March 5, 2017
In most ways it was a pretty garden-variety race, pacers taking it through 30 km right around 3:00 / km with most of the bigger overseas and a massive but steadily dwindling pack of Japanese men in tow. After the next-generation breakthrough in Tokyo last week hopes were high with a large number of current and past Hakone Ekiden stars in the field for their first or second marathons the same would happen here. It was almost a foregone conclusion that somebody would be running under 2:09 in pursuit of a place on the London World Championships team, the consensus seeming to be that it would take better than Yuki Kawauc…