Robert Kipkoech Cheruiyot defends his title at the 111th Boston Marathon (© Getty Images)
Robert Kipkoech Cheruiyot has a chance to do something Bill Rodgers couldn't do. After his triumph at last year's B.A.A. Boston Marathon (an IAAF Gold Label Road Race), Cheruiyot joined Rodgers, Canada's Gerard Cote, and his own countrywoman Catherine Ndereba as a four-time victor in the historic race. On Monday (20th), Cheruiyot will have a chance to top Ndereba, Rodgers and Cote, and become the second-most-frequent winner in 113 runnings of the race. The tall Kenyan holds the course record of 2:07:14 from his 2006 victory.
Only the legendary Clarence Demar, a bronze medallist in the marathon at the 1924 Olympics, has more than four wins in Boston, seven, spread over an astounding twenty years from 1911 to 1930. (The last, run when Demar was forty-two, makes him the oldest winner in the race's history.)
In his four previous wins, Cheruiyot demonstrated masterful understanding of the Boston course and the strategies needed to win there. "Boston," he said in a December 2008 interview, "is my second home." In 2006, one of a string of very warm years, Cheruiyot followed an irrationally fast early pace and claimed the course record by simply burying all other contenders; in 2007, in rainy and windy conditions, he waited out a slow start and sprung the race-winning move at a drinks station just over a mile from the finish.
The challenge for Cheruiyot
Though a four-time champion and course record holder, Cheruiyot isn't the fastest man in the field. That distinction, for the first time since Rodgers' day, is held by an American, Ryan Hall, who ran 2:06:17 for 5th last April in London. The last American man to win the Boston Marathon was Greg Meyer in 1983, a fact of which Hall is well aware.
In 2006, Meyer addressed a conference of distance coaches hosted by the B.A.A. in sight of the Marathon finish line, and asked them, "Please find a man who can win the Boston Marathon. I don't want them wheeling me out when I'm 80, saying, 'He's the last American to win here.'"
Hall's coach, Terence Mahon, was there, and in Hall he's found a runner who seems to feed on the tremendous expectations placed on him.
Hall might have returned to London for another fast time, but instead opted for the chance to run well in Boston.
Also planning on meeting at the starting line in the western suburb of Hopkinton on Monday morning will be 2004 Boston champion Timothy Cherigat, sub-2:07 marathoners Deriba Merga of Ethiopia, Evans Cheruiyot, and Daniel Rono, both of Kenya. Along with Evans and Robert Kipkoech, there's a third Cheruiyot in the field, Robert Kiprono Cheruiyot, just to keep things easy to follow.
Rodgers will return run again this year, at age 61, unless the weather is warm. He will wear bib #79, commemorating the thirtieth anniversary of his 1979 victory.
Playing to Dire's Tune
Ethiopia's Dire Tune was a surprise victor in 2008. In 2009 she will be not only known but respected. Tune returns to Boston as the owner of the world record for the 1-hour run and boasting a half-marathon best of 1:07:18 from the RAK Half-Marathon in February. Tune's history in Boston is not as overwhelming as Cheruiyot's, however; her 2008 championship came by the narrow margin of two seconds, as Tune didn't so much win as refuse to accept defeat.
The women more likely to dictate most of the race in Boston are Russian: Galina Bogomolova is the national record holder with a 2:20:47 from Chicago in 2006, and Lidia Grigoryeva was the 2007 Boston champion and 2008 Chicago champion.
Much attention so far, however, has focused on Kara Goucher, the third-place finisher at last fall's New York City Marathon and the 2007 bronze medalist in the 10,000m at the Osaka world championships.
While the last American woman to win in Boston is slightly more recent than the men (Lisa Larsen Weidenbach won in 1985), the drought has still lasted nearly a quarter-century, and Goucher has made it plain that she intends to break it. (She is on the cover of the local running magazine with the block-letter quote, "I want to win the Boston Marathon.")
Goucher sharpened her speed with indoor track races in New York and Boston this winter, and took advantage of the trip with 20-mile runs on the marathon course on successive weekends. (Video of the second run made it to the web, including Goucher telling the camera, "This is the most over-hyped marathon training run ever.") Her coach, Alberto Salazar, is the 1982 champion, and he was advised in turn by Bill Rodgers' coach, Bill Squires. Perhaps more indicative of her condition, Goucher won the Lisbon half-marathon in 1:08:30. Her PB at the distance (1:06:57) is slightly quicker than Tune's, and Tune was well behind Goucher in New York last fall.
Sunday races
The B.A.A. is building on the success of 2008, when the U.S. Olympic marathon selection race was held on the Sunday before the marathon.
(Monday is Patriot's Day, a state holiday only in Massachusetts and nearby Maine.) This year, a 5km road race and a series of road miles will be run downtown on Sunday (19th) using the Marathon's finish line. Former champions including Ingrid Kristiansen (1989), Lorraine Moller (1984) and Neal Cusack (1974) will be running the 5km; entrants in the elite heat of the mile include Olympic 10,000m bronze medalist Shalane Flanagan and former European indoor 3000m champion Alistair Cragg, as well as Goucher's husband Adam.
Parker Morse for the IAAF
