FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Great Weather, Great Finishes for 11,494 at the NYC Half-Marathon
Yamauchi sets event record; Kamais upsets Gebrselassie
New York, March 21, 2010—After their victories in today's NYC
Half-Marathon, Mara Yamauchi and Peter Kamais sounded even happier than
you'd expect winners of a major road race to be. Both produced strong
finishes to defeat world-class fields on a day of near-perfect weather, as
NYRR and 11,494 finishers—the most in the event's five-year
history—celebrated the end of a long, icy winter with this race's first
spring running.
"I never thought I would win here," said Kamais, a 33-year-old Kenyan 10K
specialist who was running only the second half-marathon of his career.
"Haile is so strong—I did not expect to beat him." Marathon world
record-holder Haile Gebrselassie had indeed taken the lead from the start,
and after a tour of Central Park's hilly six-mile loop, only Kamais was
still with him. But Gebrselassie pulled up at eight miles, the victim of a
mild asthma attack, and Kamais ran on alone. (After stopping for about a
minute, Gebrselassie tried to resume a race effort, but he soon pulled out
again and did not finish.)
Kamais had built a lead of 45 seconds when he reached the finish line on
the West Side Highway in lower Manhattan. He stopped the clock in a
personal-best 59:53—the second-fastest time in event history (after
Gebrselassie's 59:24 from 2007) and his first time under the one-hour
mark.
Halfway through the women's race, Yamauchi, A 36-year-old British citizen
based in Japan, had all but conceded the win to American half-marathon
record-holder Deena Kastor, who had built a lead of about 30 seconds with
a bold front-running strategy. "My race went from bad to good today," said
Yamauchi. "I didn't give up because as soon as you give up in your mind,
your body gives up. I told myself that a bad day was better than a really
bad day."
She pressed on, and when the race turned south along the Hudson River,
Yamauchi could see Kastor ahead. The gap had shrunk. "When I saw Deena, I
thought, ‘Maybe this isn't so bad, let's get moving,'" Yamauchi said
afterward. She caught Kastor with two miles left in the race and had built
an 18-second margin by the finish; her time of 1:09:25 was also 18 seconds
under the event record, set in the race's inaugural running in 2006 by
Kenya's Catherine Ndereba. "I didn't think the time was going to be what
it was, so I'm really, really pleased," said Yamauchi. (She and Kastor
will have a rematch on April 25 at the Virgin London Marathon.)
The men's and women's battles for second place were similar—and both
thrilling. Kastor had to sprint hard to hold off a late charge from Madaí
Pérez of Mexico, who closed to within two seconds of the American at the
line. The extra effort gave Kastor a time of 1:09:43, equal to Ndereba's
old course record.
Kenya's Moses Kigen Kipkosgei and American Mo Trafeh were running
shoulder-to-shoulder when they reached the 13-mile mark, and they staged
an all-out sprint over the final tenth of a mile. Kipkosgei prevailed by
one second—and in a one-second personal-best time of 1:00:38. Trafeh's
1:00:39 was a personal best by a bit more: a minute and 42 seconds, to be
precise.
Strong contingents of local runners were led by Aziza Aliyu, eighth in the
women's race in 1:13:34, and Tesfaye Girma, 10th among the men in 1:03:12.
Both compete for the West Side Runners team.
The excellent weather for running—53 degrees and sunny, with a mild
breeze—produced finishing times that were generally several minutes faster
throughout the field than in the event's four previous years, when the
race was held in the summer. "It was great, perfect, fast weather,"
enthused Audrey Kingsley, 41, of Manhattan, who finished in 1:32:31. "I
ran my best time in six years!"
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