New Champions in Boston Marathon

As Uta Pippig turned onto Boylston Street on Monday, she waved to the crowd as she so often has, smiled and crossed the Boston Marathon’s finish line.

By then, the Ethiopian national anthem was finished and Fatuma Roba was holding a bouquet of flowers, wearing a laurel crown and finding out that, while winning an Olympic gold medal in Atlanta was nice, winning $75,000 and a gold medal in Boston was better.

As Moses Tanui turned onto Boylston Street, he was resigned to his fate and realized that the applause wasn’t quite as loud as it had been a year ago. And by the time Cosmas Ndeti got there, he was an object of curiosity, mixed in with a few--of all people--Americans.

By then, Kenyan countryman Lameck Aguta was talking about the magic of winning in Boston.

Roba, 27, and Aguta, 25, were champions of the 101st Boston Marathon, Roba breaking Pippig’s three-year stranglehold on the title, as she predicted she would a week ago, and doing it easily.

Her time was 2 hours 26 minutes 23 seconds, 46 seconds faster than that of Elana Meyer of South Africa, who was 54 seconds ahead of another South African, Colleen De Reuck. Pippig, from Germany, was fourth, in 2:28:51. Kim Jones, the first American woman to finish, was ninth, in 2:32:52.

Aguta made sure the Kenyan national anthem would be played near the victory stand for the seventh consecutive year, staying with a slow pack of runners for 35 kilometers, then pulling away to win in 2:10:34.

It was the slowest winning time since Ibrahim Hussein started the Kenyan domination of this race in 1991, with a time of 2:11:06.

Joseph Kamau of Kenya was second in 2:10:46, followed by Mexico’s Dionicio Ceron and German Silva and Tanui, in fifth. Ndeti was 27th, in 2:22:56.

The first American was Daniel Gonzalez, of Rancho Santa Margarita, 19th in 2:18:30. American Olympian Keith Brantly dropped out at 15 kilometers. Mark Plaatjes, who led early, dropped out at 30 kilometers.

The running traffic early was about that of the car traffic on the San Diego Freeway at 6:30 a.m., and that’s because the early pace was about the same as the San Diego Freeway at 6:30.

Some runners call that racing “tactically,” or “strategically,” but Ceron wasn’t having any.

“I was just running, trying to stay in the pocket, but when I saw 66 minutes [for the first half of the race], I just took off,” he said. “It was slow.”

The men went 13.1 miles in 1:06:11, then 13.1 more in 1:04:23, which played into the hands of Aguta. He has spent three years working with Dieter Hogan, coach-boyfriend of Pippig, in Boulder, Colo. When he isn’t working with Hogan, Aguta is training in Kenya with Daniel Komen and Moses Kiptanui.

Komen is a renowned 3,000-meter runner, and Kiptanui holds the world record in the steeplechase.

“All the years I’ve been coming to Boston, I’ve been trying to find a way to win,” said Aguta, who did so in his fourth try after finishing fourth twice and 14th. “I’ve been training for the last 5K to be fast.

“My coach [Hogan] said that if I could get to 30 or 35 kilometers all right, nobody was going to be able to go with me the last 5K.”

Nobody did. By then, a winnowing-out process had occurred, the lead pack dwindling from 30-35 for most of the first half, to 25, to 12, to six and then five, with Ceron handling the heavy lifting in the second half until 35 kilometers.

Then Aguta kicked in, first shedding Silva, then Tanui, then Ceron and finally Kamau with a mile to go.

“I tried to go faster, but the two Africans did too,” said Ceron, who had sat in a Sunday meeting among the Mexicans, discussing teamwork, then discovered Monday during the race that some his teammates--notably, Alejandro Cruz, Isidro Rico and Geraldo Alcala--weren’t up to playing.

That left it up to Ceron and Silva, but the Kenyans were working together, too, and there were a lot more of them.

They hung back early and were quite content to show massed white uniforms until the last few miles, when it became every man for himself.

In the end, Tanui, who has been fighting bronchitis, faltered. So did Ndeti, who had said he had felt “like it was ’93 again.”

Ndeti won the first of his three consecutive Boston victories in 1993.

A year later, Pippig won the first of her three in succession, and she stayed with a five-pack of women for almost 20 miles on Monday in search of her fourth.

Her training had been hampered by a chain of injuries that began with the Atlanta Olympics.

“At first, I was doubtful, but I thought, ‘You never know, you know?’ ” she said, showing she has been Americanized, at least as far as the language is concerned, after spending her youth and part of every year in Germany.

“I was excited, and I was fourth, but that’s OK. I couldn’t see the other runners. I could hear the crowd though.”

Roba could hear it too, but it was hard to tell, because her running style reflects her personality: shy and stoic, with downcast eyes and body leaning forward.

She had sought to validate her Olympic victory. Her reward back home for Olympic gold had been about $7,000, but more important was the realization in chauvinistic Ethiopia that women could do something besides stand by their men.

“To be honest, I didn’t know the Boston Marathon race,” she said. “Even though I had doubts in the beginning . . . I knew I could win.”

She did rather easily, controlling things from Hopkinton to downtown, 26 miles 385 yards.

Marathon Notes

Jean Driscoll’s bid for an eighth consecutive victory in the women’s wheelchair division of the Boston Marathon ended with a flat tire and a tumble onto the street in the 23rd mile. Driscoll, of Champaign, Ill., was racing with eventual winner Louise Sauvage of Australia--with whom Driscoll had dueled in the Los Angeles Marathon in March--when she ran over some railroad tracks in the street and flattened the tire. She tried to change it, but couldn’t and finished the race on the flat in second place, 6:43 behind Sauvage’s 1:54:28. . . . Franz Nietlispach of Switzerland was the men’s wheelchair winner in 1:28:14.

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Top Finishers in the Boston Marathon

Men

1. Lameck Aguta, Kenya, 2 hours 10 minutes 34 seconds.

2. Joseph Kamau, Kenya, 2:10:46.

3. Dionicio Ceron, Mexico, 2:10:59.

4. German Silva, Mexico, 2:11:21.

5. Moses Tanui, Kenya, 2:11:38.

Top American

19. Danny Gonzalez, Rancho Santa Margarita, Calif., 2:18:30

*

Women

1. Fatuma Roba, Ethiopia, 2:26:23.

2. Elana Meyer, South Africa, 2:27:09.

3. Colleen De Reuck, South Africa, 2:28:03.

4. Uta Pippig, Germany, 2:28:51.

5. Derartu Tulu, Ethiopia, 2:30:28.

Top American

9. Kim Jones, Spokane, Wash., 2:32:52.