Ramilia Burangolova won the LA Marathon. © www.photorun.net
Kenya’s Fred Mogaka has won “The Challenge” at the Los Angeles Marathon. As in the past years, the race organizers offered the overall winner a six-figure prize purse. To make it a true challenge between the best male and female athletes, the elite women begin their race 20 minutes ahead of the men, and the first finisher wins the bonus. Mogaka overtook the women’s leader to collect the $100,000 bonus, in addition, he collected $20,000 and a car for winning the men’s race.
Russia’s Ramilia Burangolova won the women’s race in 2:37:54. She was passed by Mogaka a little more than a mile from the finish. In the previous three years, the women’s winner had won “The Challenge” twice.
Surprise at Lake Biwa Marathon At the Lake Biwa Marathon in Japan, Samson Ramadhani (Tanzania) won in 2:10:43. He beat the favorites William Kiplagat (Kenya/2:10:47) and Ambesse Tolossa (Ethiopia/2:11:15).
Noguchi out of London Olympic Champion Mizuki Noguchi has withdrawn from the Flora London Marathon next month owing to an Achilles tendon injury. Race director David Bedford commented: “We are obviously very disappointed that Noguchi will not be joining us in London this spring, but reports from her coach were that from late January Mizuki was bothered with an inflamed Achilles tendon in her left leg, and this hampered her enough that she was barely running during this period. Careful, steady treatment from her physio has more or less healed the injury, but the short of it is that she has missed about a month of quality training”.
Kipchoge included in world cross country team, chaotic starting procedure in Kenya Eliud Kipchoge, who was supposed to be Kenya’s most promising cross country runner in the fight against the Ethiopians at the World Cross Country Championships on March 24, has been added to the Kenyan team, although he had missed qualification and had not been named at first. At the trials he had missed the required placing owing to stomach cramps in the heat. Now he can nonetheless hope to run in the world championships.
The Kenyan newspaper The Standard reported that the 22-year-old was named for the Kenyan squad by the national federation. At present eleven runners are nominated, but only nine will be able to run. Athletics Kenya will decide at a later stage who will start in Mombassa. Furthermore, the newspaper reported about a chaotic starting procedure at the world championships trials. Apparently the starting gun malfunctioned several times. The referee then intended to do a test, but the gun suddenly went off accidentally. A large number of athletes in the 12K men’s race started to run while others remained standing at the start. Not until some runners had run several hundred meters did the referee stop the race. To give runners a short rest, the event was then restarted 15 minutes later.
