In Boston, Japan’s Seko Is Gone Into the Wind

Toshihiko Seko, with traditional Japanese humility, claims that he entered Monday’s Boston Marathon expecting to lose.

“There were so many good competitors, I just didn’t think I could win,” he said.

Indeed, even during the last seven miles, after he had broken away from the lead pack--effortlessly, it appeared--he couldn’t stop looking over his shoulder, as if expecting to be overtaken at any moment.

“I wanted to see who was following me,” he said, speaking through an interpreter. “I wanted to see who was coming behind me, but I couldn’t see anyone coming.”

The perception was somewhat different from several hundred yards back.

“He just run away from us,” said Welshman Steve Jones, who holds the second-fastest marathon time in history. “And there was nothing we could do about it, that’s all.”

Seko, 30, won the 26.2-mile race for the second time in 2 hours 11 minutes 50 seconds, far slower than he had hoped to run and far slower than his best of 2:08:27 last fall in America’s Marathon/Chicago. When he won the race here in 1981, he finished in 2:09:26.

Jones was second in 2:12:37 and Great Britain’s Geoff Smith, the 1984 and 1985 Boston winner, was third in 2:12:42.

As expected, Portugal’s Rosa Mota, 28, won in the women’s division, running 2:25:21 in her first Boston Marathon.

Two Belgian women placed second and third, Agnes Pardaens in 2:29:50 and Ria Van Landegham in 2:29:56.

The first American man was David Gordon of Eugene, Ore., fourth in 2:13:30, and the first American woman was Leatrice Hayer of Greenfield, Mass., who placed eighth with a time of 2:37:58.

The men’s wheelchair winner was Andre Viger, 34, of Canada, the defending champion, in 1:55:42. Among the women, defending champion Candace Cable-Brookes of San Luis Obispo, Calif., won in 2:19:54.

Seko and Mota each won $40,000 in cash and a Mercedes-Benz car worth $31,000.

More than 6,300 runners lined up for the start in suburban Hopkinton under cloudy skies, occasional mist and temperatures in the mid-50s, conditions that would have been nearly ideal had it not been for a strong head wind that hampered the runners the entire way.

The race was marred by two accidents at the start.

In one, defending champion Rob de Castella of Australia was knocked down, or fell, just after the gun went off. He tumbled down, rolled over once, jumped up and started running again--but was covered with cuts when he finished the race in sixth place.

In a separate incident, four wheelchairs were involved in a chain reaction crash during the first mile. The wheelchair event begins 15 minutes earlier than the runners’ start.

It was the fastest men’s field since the Olympics--maybe even including the Olympics--yet the down-to-the-wire race people had been predicting never materialized.

In fact, the pace was agonizingly slow right from the start.

That might have been traced to the wind or, simply, to everyone’s early reluctance to make the first move.

Whatever the reason, the lead pack clung together against the wind for the first 19 miles, rarely dipping under a five-minutes-per mile pace. It was a race tailor-made for Seko, whose tremendous leg speed often enables him to break away unchallenged during the last few miles.

This time, impatient with the sluggish pace, he made his move earlier than usual. At the crest of one of the notorious grades known collectively as Heartbreak Hill, he began to pick up the pace, loping off miles that averaged between 4 minutes 40 seconds and 4:50.

He was totally in control, looking extremely relaxed, his face unfurrowed and expressionless, his body flowing without any apparent struggle.

“I had so much left at that point--and the others were going so slow,” he said. “That slow pace really bothered me. I thought maybe at the top of the hill, not many could follow me.”

He was right, of course, although he kept behaving as if he didn’t believe it. Time after time, he twisted around to see if anyone else was approaching. No one was.

The pack of about 17 men who ran most of the first 19 miles together included Jones, who has run 2:07:13, one second short of the world record; John Treacy, who won a silver medal running his first marathon in the 1984 Olympics; Gordon; De Castella, who won here last year in a course-record 2:07:51; Juma Ikangaa, ranked No. 1 in the world in the marathon last year; Bruce Bickford, ranked No. 1 in 10,000 meters in 1985, running his first marathon; Ken Martin of Phoenix, winner of the 1985 Pittsburgh Marathon, and Ed Eyestone of Orem, Utah, an All-American in track and cross-country at Brigham Young University who this year has become a road-racing sensation at shorter distances.

Martin eventually finished 10th in 2:15:41. Ikangaa was 11th, running 2:16:17. Treacy ran a disappointing 14th in 2:17:50. Bickford and Eyestone were 17th and 19 respectively in 2:18:57 and 2:19:19.

Four-time Boston winner Bill Rodgers, who finished fourth last year, ran 2:18:18, finishing 15th.

After Seko’s departure on Heartbreak Hill, the race became a duel for second between Smith and Jones.

“We were both running as hard as we could,” Smith said. “We were working together, hoping Seko would slow down. We worked quite well for the last six miles. When Seko made his move, we thought there was a chance he would come back. (But) he put in such a surge . . . he opened up such a gap. . . . We tried as hard as we could.”

Referring to his personal friendship with Jones and how it affected the race, Smith added: “It was a good way for us to be together. Usually, I’m down and he’s encouraging me. Today it was both of us encouraging each other.”

All of the runners complained about the wind, which one top athlete’s coach estimated at 20 m.p.h. “It affected us all,” Jones said.

Added Smith: “If we’d not had the wind, we’d have been running five seconds a mile faster.”

Mota, who ran slower than her best of 2:23:29, was never threatened.

“She didn’t feel the course was as hard as some people say, especially Heartbreak Hill” said Jose Pedrosa, her coach and longtime companion who was serving as her interpreter. “She was extremely motivated by the crowds along the course. Also, a big factor was the front wind.”

Mota, the bronze medalist in the 1984 Olympic marathon, agreed, speaking on her own this time.

“When I saw the front wind, I think: ‘Forget it, the time,’ ” she said. She had been hoping to better her personal best of 2:23:29.

This was Seko’s third Boston Marathon. In 1979, he watched Rodgers run away from him on Heartbreak Hill. In 1981, however, Seko beat both Rodgers and Craig Virgin in a then-course record 2:09:26.

He won his first marathon in Fukuoka, Japan, in 1978, and followed with Fukuoka championships in 1979, 1980 and 1983. He also won the 1983 Tokyo Marathon.

In 1984, he suffered his only loss since the 1979 Boston race in the 1984 Olympic marathon in Los Angeles, where he placed 14th in 2:14:13.

He did not run a marathon in 1985, but returned in 1986 to win the London Marathon in 2:10:02 and the Chicago race in a personal best 2:08:27.