2008 - End of Year Review - ROAD: Running/Race Walking
Lornah Kiplagat of the Netherlands wins in 68:37 (Getty Images)
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Monte-Carlo - The respected track and field statisticians, A. Lennart Julin and Mirko Jalava continue their end of season review, with the 2008 competitive highlights of the road events, the Road Running and Race Walks – Part Five of eight.
MEN
Marathon
30-year-old Martin Lel (KEN) started the marathon season with another important win in London setting a personal best 2:05:15 for his third win in four years there. The 2003 World Half Marathon champion however fell short in Beijing finishing fifth there in 2:10:24 well behind the medals.
Countryman Samuel Wanjiru, who had finished second behind Lel in London only losing by nine seconds (2:05:24 PB), was spectacular in Beijing winning in a fast 2:06:32 in very difficult conditions. Wanjiru, 22-years-old, holds the World Half Marathon record at 58:33 from 2007 and developed into an elite athlete in Japan where he went to high school.
Haile Gebrselassie, who had the world leading time 2:04:53 from Dubai in January, did not want to risk it and run in what he feared would be poor air conditions in Beijing and competed in Berlin again for the third year in a row. The 35-year-old delivered again winning his third consecutive Berlin marathon with a second straight world record 2:03:59 cutting 27 seconds off his 2007 mark and become the first man to go under 2 hours and 4 minutes.
Kenya has a huge 65 athletes in the world top 100 with Ethiopia in second with 15. Japan has seven for the third place.
20km Race Walk
The men’s 20km race walking season started as usual with extremely fast times in Russia. 22-year-old Valeriy Borchin, 2006 European Championships silver medallist, set a personal best of 1:17:55 in February in Adler. Borchin even challenged Spanish favourite Francisco Javier Fernández at the World Cup in Cheboksary with Fernández just able to pull off a win in 1:18:15 and Borchin close behind in second clocking 1:18:21.
In Beijing, Fernández was once more looking for that first worldwide gold medal, but it was not to be this time either with the Spaniard finishing in seventh place.
Instead it was 34-year-old 1996 Olympic gold and 2004 silver medallist Jefferson Pérez (ECU), the 2003, 05 and 07 World champion, who looked to be on his way to another Olympic title before Borchin came and stole the show. The young Russian was sharp in the latter parts of the race winning the gold comfortably in 1:19:01 with Pérez second in 1:19:15.
Jared Tallent just edged Chinese junior Wang Hao, who turned 19-years-old on the day of the race, for the bronze medal 1:19:42 to 1:19:47.
China has 26 athletes in the world top 100 and Russia 13 in second place. Japan and Belarus are tied for the third with seven both.
50km Race Walk
The fast times at the World Cup in Cheboksary promised a good race for the 50km gold in Beijing too. 28-year-old Russian Denis Nizhegorodov set a World record winning the World Cup in 3:34:14 with Italian Alex Schwazer finishing in second with a 3:37:04 personal best.
Schwazer, who had got a bronze medal from both 2005 and 2007 World Championships, was known to be stronger than those results showed but the way he took the gold in Beijing was rampant. The Italian made his move early winning by more than two minutes in 3:37:09 having the time to wave to the crowd on his way to the Olympic gold.
Australian surprise Jared Tallent, 24-years-old, took his second medal of the Olympics with a 3:39:27 personal best ahead of Nizhegorodov who was third this time following his 2004 silver medal in 3:40:14.
1993 World Champion Jesus Angel Garcia (ESP), 39, competing in his fifth Olympics, found an Olympic medal still eluded him, but did get his best Olympic performance with fourth place in 3:44:08.
China has 15 athletes in the world top 100. Russia is second with nine and Spain third at six.
WOMEN
Marathon
A quarter of a century since the event was introduced on the global championships programme, the women's marathon is no longer an event in progress but has become a fully mature discipline without any noticeable statistical trend.
This assertion is not based on the World record having stood unchallenged for five years at 2:15:25 (Paula Radcliffe 2003) but on the fact that the general levels in the year lists have remained unchanged since the new millennium began e.g. has the number of sub-2:25 runners from 2000 to 2008 varied as follows: 12, 14, 23, 16, 14, 16, 18, 12 and 13.
This stand-still might seem surprising bearing in mind that Marathon standards have continued to rise considerably among the men. While 12th place in the World lists thus was almost identical for the women in 2000 and 2008 the mark giving 12th place for the men eight years ago is only sufficient for 32nd place in 2008!!
This trend completely contradicts the generally held view that the women are shrinking the gender gap in our sport. How could this be? Even a very quick glance at the year lists gives the answer. While the men's list is almost completely dominated by runners from East Africa – 22 Kenyans and 4 Ethiopians among the top-30! – the women's list is much more heterogeneous with a just as strong presence from Russia and Japan as from Kenya and Ethiopia.
Looking especially at Kenya the difference is almost incredible. While the top Kenyan woman is in 14th place there are no less than nine Kenyans among the top-14 men! Obviously the social situation – and perhaps also less price money – has discouraged Kenyan women from pursuing marathon careers to the same extent as the men do. One could only guess what the women's World list would look like if the premises had been more balanced.
To the question "Who was the best female marathon runner in 2008?" there are a number of alternative answers.
Choosing the "competitive" perspective the answer must be the Olympic champion Constantina Dita-Tomescu. She ran an impressively courageous race in Beijing breaking away soon after halfway and then managing to keep the others at bay all the way to the finish. But the next six runners all finished within just 47 seconds, so the triumph was far from decisive.
Choosing the "statistical" perspective the answer is Irina Mikitenko who with her 2:19:19 in Berlin not only is a clear No 1 in 2008 (over two minutes ahead of the next runner) but also No 4 of All-time.
Choosing the "most impressive" perspective the answer is Paula Radliffe who basically ran all a world class field into the ground in the New York City Marathon winning by almost two minutes.
20km Race Walk
23-year-old Olga Kaniskina is already firmly established as the undisputed No 1 walker. The 2007 World champion this year competed three times, set the World leading time of 1:25:11 in February (faster than the World record but the result could not be registered as a new record as only Russian and no international judges were present, click here for full story), won the World Cup in May, and took the Olympic gold in August.
The 20km Race Walk is probably the event where the correlation between statistics and championship outcome is the weakest as the world list usually is dominated by just a couple of competitions. This year the Russian Winter championship in Adler provided all the fastest times creating a world list where Russian athletes occupy the top six positions.
But in Beijing that statistical map was not very relevant. Of the three Russians only winner Olga Kaniskina figured prominently, the other two ended up 12th and disqualified. The remaining two medals instead went to Norwegian super-veteran (turned 36 in January!) Kjersti Tysse Plätzer and Italian Elisa Rigaudo.
Within the top-9 no less than eight different nations were represented. Despite the fear for heat and humidity the times turned out quite fast with the top-9 dipping under 1:28 and all but the winner Kaniskina recording their best time of the year! Four of them even set new national records!
IAAF