Lagat, Abera Can Picture Another Race to the Finish

It would seem the Kenyan men no longer have to worry about anyone else in the Boston Marathon. Their success in one of the world’s most renowned long runs is unrivaled: an unprecedented 10 consecutive victories, first-and-second-place finishes four of the last six years, five of the top six finishers a year ago.

Yet there is a rivalry developing between Kenya’s defending Boston champion, Elijah Lagat, and the Ethiopian whom Lagat defeated in a photo finish last year, Gezahegne Abera. It was the closest finish in the race’s history.

That Abera went on to win the Olympic marathon, the only distance-running prize Kenya’s men never have claimed, has intensified the competition going into today’s 105th Boston Marathon.

The Kenyans, who have eight elite runners in the Boston field, don’t like Abera’s run-from-behind tactics. And Abera, one of only two elite Ethiopians in the field, doesn’t like the Kenyans’ pack style.

“At the finish last year, one of the Kenyans elbowed me,” Abera said through an interpreter. “The same kind of ganging up will not happen this year. In an athletic competition, there has to be some kind of discipline.”

And who threw the elbow?

“The man who finished first,” Abera said.

Lagat denied it happened, called the accusation “an excuse” and countercharged that Abera continually was clipping his heels.

“I was in front most of the time, and he was stepping on my shoe,” Lagat said. “I warned him several times, but he kept repeating it.”

Perhaps there was a communication problem, because Lagat was saying, “Don’t step on my shoe” in English, and Abera speaks Amharic? Hadn’t it been Abera complaining a year ago that the Kenyans had stepped on his feet?

“When you are hitting someone else’s shoes, you know it,” Lagat said.

And the elbow?

“Look at the race,” Lagat said. “When I passed him in the final sprint, I was far to his right.”

Perhaps it is natural that the East African neighbors should become rivals, now that Ethiopia has rebuilt a marathon running program that languished for three decades after its glories of the 1960s, when Mamo Wolde (1968) and Abebe Bikila (1960-64) won Olympic marathons.

Seventeen years of a dictatorial Marxist government, a long border war with Eritrea and continued grinding poverty left Ethiopia behind, as Kenya became the world’s distance-running power soon after gaining independence from England in 1963.

A decade ago, Morocco began to challenge the Kenyans, leading to a bitter duel between winner Khalid Skah of Morocco and runner-up Richard Chelimo of Kenya in the 10,000 meters at the 1992 Olympics. Then it was the Kenyans claiming they had been ganged up on by Skah and countryman Hammou Boutayeb.

“The rivalry between Kenya and Morocco was only at an Olympics or at a championships,” Lagat said. “Kenya and Ethiopia, we don’t have any rivalry. It is just that some people don’t accept to be defeated and look for an excuse.

“This elbowing did not happen. It is an excuse, not accepting that I won the race.”

Lagat, 34, and Abera, 22, both claim to be in better shape than a year ago, when each was clocked in a relatively pedestrian 2 hours 9 minutes 47 seconds on a cold, windy day.

Lagat’s optimism comes from having run a half-marathon last month a minute faster than he covered the same distance before the 2000 Boston Marathon. Abera’s last race was the Dec. 7 Fukuoka, Japan Marathon, where he finished fifth in 2:09:45.

Running a marathon only nine weeks after his Olympic triumph was probably a mistake for Abera, given how much training time he lost in the extended national celebration of the victory.

It began upon his return from Sydney, when the cars carrying Abera and Ethiopia’s three other Olympic track champions took three hours to get through the crowds lining the five-mile route from the airport to the center of Addis Ababa.

“It was like the whole city of Addis Ababa came out to greet me,” Abera said. “That was very astonishing.”

He could have a similar sensation in Boston, where the Ethiopian community of Massachusetts, estimated between 6,000 and 7,000 people, has been asked to stay off the course by race officials. The message has been relayed on a local Ethiopian radio program.

Although only one Ethiopian man, Abebe Mekkonen in 1990, has won Boston, Fatuma Roba fanned Ethiopian pride with three consecutive Boston wins from 1997 through 1999 and a second last year to Kenya’s Catherine Ndereba.

The first year Roba won, some local Ethiopians briefly ran alongside her at several points and tried to give her flags and mementos. She put on a headband with Ethiopian colors handed her by one fan.

Both Roba and Ndereba are back this year. They should be challenged by Kenya’s Lornah Kiplagat, second behind Ndereba at the 2000 LaSalle Bank Chicago Marathon.

Roba, the 1996 Olympic champion, is one of four runners to win both the Olympics and Boston. Only one of that group is a man, Italy’s Gelindo Bordin.

Sponsored by the Mugar cement company running team, Abera was rewarded for his Olympic victory by the government with land in both the country and the city of Addis Ababa. Like the country’s other Olympic champions, he had a school named for him.

“I was proud to bring the gold medal back to Ethiopia,” Abera said.

And he kept it from Kenya.