Tanui, Pippig Celebrate the 100th

Cosmas Ndeti played tour guide for 20 miles Monday, then Moses Tanui decided he didn’t need help in finding downtown and left the leader of the Kenyan running delegation behind.

Uta Pippig was sick for almost 25 miles Monday, then was nursed back to temporary health by some loud Bostonians.

Tanui and Pippig earned $100,000 each for winning the centennial Boston Marathon. Tanui led the men in 2 hours 9 minutes 16 seconds, perhaps surprising to those who expected a Ndeti-led parade. And Pippig led the women in 2:27:12, perhaps surprising only to herself after she realized her plight.

“A race is not one person,” said Tanui, who, like many of the 14 Kenyan men in the race, was a little tired of hearing about Ndeti. Tanui had finished second to Ndeti, a minute behind, last year in Boston.

No, in this case it was 38,702 official persons, about four times the normal Boston field, enlarged for the 100th running of the race and somehow shunted over the starting line in suburban Hopkinton in 28 1/2 minutes. About 10,000 bandits also joined the party.

In front of them all ran the Kenyans. Ndeti had been their frequent spokesman because of his three consecutive Boston victories, but he also was the target of countrymen who believe that his success in the marathon is overblown because he doesn’t run well anywhere else.

They talked and gestured.

“We Kenyans try to help each other, to encourage each other,” Tanui said.

They did just that, speaking Swahili in front of a mostly Kenyan 18-man pack that Ndeti led for much of the race. Apparently, the conversation with about six miles to go was something on the order of, “Every man for himself.”

Then on Heartbreak Hill, perhaps a fitting place, Ndeti learned why no one has won the Boston Marathon four consecutive times.

Tanui and Ezekiel Bitok took over, Ndeti briefly dropping back to sixth, then working his way back up, but never again closer than 100 yards.

“I tried to push the pace to see if someone comes with me,” Tanui said. “We feel that is the start of the race.”

And the finish of Ndeti.

Five miles later, Tanui sprinted away from Bitok, who finished 10 seconds behind. Ndeti, who had proclaimed, “I will be the first man in the world to win four times in a row,” instead finished third, 35 seconds behind Tanui.

“Today I was ready,” Ndeti said. “My body was ready. There was a strong wind, though.”

Ndeti bucked that wind, leading most of the first 20 miles and setting a torrid pace that was 20 seconds faster than the course record for the first mile--run in 4:33--and 1:30 seconds faster at 13.1 miles, or halfway.

It was too fast.

“To me it was OK,” Ndeti insisted. “I ran in the lead and didn’t feel it was too fast.”

Maybe, but at 20 miles the pace and Ndeti had slowed and shortly thereafter cramps and two Kenyans had overtaken him.

The finish featured a five-man Kenyan sweep, with Lameck Aguta fourth and Sammy Lelei fifth. Abebe Mekonnen of Ethiopia was sixth, followed by two more Kenyans, Charles Tangus and Paul Yego.

It was, said Isaiah Kiplagat, president of Kenya’s track and field federation, the country’s finest hour in a decade or so of fine hours of distance running. He immediately named Ndeti, Bitok and Aguta as Kenya’s Olympic marathon representatives, with Tanui going back to the 10,000 meters, believed his best distance--before Monday.

For 24 miles, it looked as though that hour was going to extend to the women as well. Tegla Loroupe, a Kenyan who is occasionally resentful because her federation lavishes support on the men of the Nandi tribe instead of her Pikots, was cruising.

She ran with Russia’s Alla Jiliaeva and Kim Jones of Spokane, Wash., the leaders through the first half, and with Pippig, who was trying to hold on but with increasing difficulty.

Jones dropped out, Jiliaeva dropped back and Loroupe took over the lead at 18 miles. She stretched it to more than 200 yards over Pippig and began preparing her victory speech.

Pippig was plainly laboring.

“Cramps, everything,” she said. “It started at about seven kilometers, about four miles. I thought several times I would have to drop out.”

She persevered and with a mile to go, two things happened:

--Loroupe’s thighs began cramping.

--Pippig started listening to the crowd.

“I thought I could not catch Tegla,” Pippig said. “She was too far away.

“Then, I don’t know how, but some energy came back. I think it was the crowds. So many people started screaming at me, ‘You can catch her! You can catch her!’ I got a little closer, and they got even more excited.

“I imagined I was flying.”

She was, and Loroupe had dropped anchor.

“I had heard the crowd, but I had nothing to do because I was unable to move my legs,” Loroupe said.

She got them going well enough to finish second, 1:25 behind. Nobuko Fujimura of Japan was third, in 2:29:24.

Ever image-conscious, Pippig made her pass near the last fluid station, where she took a bottle with a yellow flower sticking up and splashed water all over, to clear her head and clean herself.

Once past Loroupe, the usually stoic--until the finish line, anyway--Pippig mugged for a camera, as if to say, “Can you believe this?” and after crossing the finish line blew kisses to the crowd, her signature now for three consecutive victories.

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Marathon Notes

Heinz Frei of Switzerland was the men’s wheelchair winner, in 1:30:14, and Jean Driscoll of Champaign, Ill., the women’s winner in 1:52:56. It was Driscoll’s seventh consecutive Boston Marathon victory. . . . The first American man across the finish line was Kevin Collins, a college student from Rochester, N.Y., in 2:18:54, good for 30th place. Sharon Stubler of Minnetonka, Minn., finished in 2:42:34 to lead U.S. women, good for 31st.