After many kilometers running together, in parallel, in the wake of their personal hares, the group of secondaries already lightened who grow when they see themselves next to the first two women, the Kenyan Peres Jepchirchir, the new marathon world champion, attacked her compatriot Joyciline Jepkosgei. Again ahead. As in their three previous confrontations (Jepchirchir’s victories in Valencia, Boston and London). The routine of the Olympic and world champion. But in a few seconds she felt naked. He had fired a blank bullet. A spark that came on and went off in a matter of seconds. Within a kilometer, Jepkosgei and his guide had hunted down the adventurer. He let it mature behind him and in the final stretch of the race, at kilometer 39, after the bullring,. Joyciline descended to the postcard of the City of Arts and crossed the finish line in a capricious time (2h 14m) that leaves her fourth in the all-time world ranking.
A few minutes before, another Kenyan, John Korir, (2h 2m 24s). The winner had played with his rivals, the record holder of this circuit, the Ethiopian Sisay Lemma, who melted like sugar in coffee. Then the others came: Deriba, Kangogo, Dida. They all paid for the audacity of following an athlete who two months ago, in Chicago, ran 30 kilometers at a world record pace. Korir let them go with him beyond the halfway point of the race, where they passed in one hour, one minute and 47 seconds, slower than in the second half, where this 29-year-old Kenyan unleashed his attack, with a passage from kilometer 25 to 26 in 2m 48s, to complete that second partial in one hour and 37 seconds.
Korir rises to eighth place in the historical ranking and, more important than that, . He hasn’t had an easy road. John has always followed in the footsteps of his brother Wesley, who, like him, 13 years earlier, won the Boston Marathon (2012). That triumph, and others, changed the history of the Korir. Wesley used the profits to pay for the education of his six younger siblings. In the penultimate year he discovered a talent for running when he saw that he could follow in the footsteps of Tarah, his wife, a woman of 2h 35m in the marathon. He encouraged him to continue but without stopping studying.
Little John progressed and settled in the United States to train with Ron Mann under the tutelage of his brother Wesley. He debuted in the marathon at the age of 22, in Ottawa, where he went under 2h 10m. But on the next attempt he withdrew and when he arrived at the hotel he had a heated discussion with his mentors. John returned to Kenya and survived by driving tractors. Two years later they reconciled after promising to be more serious in training. That’s when the triumphs in Chicago and Boston came. There, at the Boylston Street finish line, Wesley was waiting for him, the person who showed him the way and taught him to be generous. John gave a tenth of the prize in Boston ($150,000) to a charity project of the Kenyan Kids Foundation, the foundation his brother created to help educate children in his region.
Two Europeans and a Japanese entered behind Korir, all with their country’s national record. First, the German Petros, then the Norwegian Kibrab and then, already off the podium, the Japanese Osako. Sixth, surprising, the British Alex Yee (2h 6m 38s), the Olympic triathlon champion.
The Spanish also shone on a bright morning, without wind and with some heat, in Valencia. Ibrahim Chakir was the best of all (2h 7m 21, sixteenth) and the first of the six who achieved the minimum for the Birmingham European Championship and a new personal best: Jorge González, the debutant Nassim Hassaous, Carlos Mayo, who suffered again in Valencia, and Jorge Blanco. The best of the women was Meritxell Soler, the Catalan dentist, from Sant Joan de Vilatorrada. At 33 years old, she sets a new personal best (2h 23m 49s, ninth) and also achieves the minimum for the European Championship, like Ester Navarrete, the second Spanish
