Kipsang wins New York City Marathon

Kenya’s Wilson Kipsang won the New York City Marathon on Sunday with a time of 2:10:59 in frigid and windy conditions.

The win gave Kipsang the World Marathon Majors series, which carried $500,000 in prize money on top of the $100,000 he took home for winning the race in New York.

Kipsang is the first runner to win the Big 3 Berlin, London and New York and he edged Ethiopia’s Lelisa Desisa in the final meters of slow race.

Kipsang’s time in the distance race was the slowest since 1995.

Ethiopia’s Gebre Gebremariam finished third with a time of 2:12:13.

Kenya’s Mary Keitany won the women’s division with a time of 2:25:07, three seconds faster than her countrywoman, Jemima Sumgong, and Portugal’s Sara Moreira, who placed third in her debut in the Big Apple.

Only 127 people competed in the first New York City Marathon, organized in 1970 by New York Road Runners club president Fred Lebow (19321994), and fewer than half of them made it to the finish line.

The New York City Marathon has grown since then into the world’s most popular race of its kind, annually drawing some 50,000 runners who are cheered on by 2 million spectators along a route that winds through all five boroughs of the Big Apple.