Germany's Luminita Zaituc and Julius Kiptum Rop won the Düsseldorf Marathon on Sunday (7 May). But warm and partly windy weather conditions made the runners suffer. So winning times were much slower than expected. Zaituc clocked 2:34:54 while Rop ran 2:15:56.
Düsseldorf was the major qualifying race for German runners concerning the European Championships in Gothenburg in August. But it ended with another major blow for German marathoners. None of the national athletes achieved the qualifying time needed for the championships. Luminita Zaituc had already broken the national qualifying standard of 2:33 hours in Berlin last year.
Zaituc ran into problems in Düsseldorf during the second half of the race. Suffering stitches and breathing problems she even had to stop running for a short time. Close to dropping out she continued the race, overtook the leading Chinese Zhang Shujing a couple of kilometres before the finsh and won the race for the second time in a row. The Chinese finished second with 2:37:21. Third place was taken by Poland's Dorota Ustianowska in 2:41:07.
In the men's race, Julius Kiptum Rop had entered as a pacemaker. But after completing his job at 25k he felt fine and decided to go for the win. In the end the Kenyan was more than a minute ahead of Germany's Martin Beckmann who missed the qualifying standard of 2:14:00. Beckmann finished in 2:17:00. While Carsten Eich had cancelled his start recently, the other German candidates for Gothenburg dropped out: Embaye Hedrit and Carsten Schütz did not finish. Brazil's Everton Luduvice Morais was third with 2:19:12.
Jörg Wenig for the IAAF
