BEIJING MARATHON, CHINA on 19 OCTOBER 2014

Ethiopia's Girmay Birhanu and Fatuma Sado were winners of the 34th edition writes Mirko Jalava. Birhanu, fastest in the field and race favourite, became the third successive Ethiopian man to win the race.

By contrast, Sado was the first overseas women's winner since Great Britain's Debie Noy back in 1991.

Starting from Tiananmen Square there were seven runners in the men's lead pack after 10km and two fewer by 15km as Kenya's Samwel Maswai led with a 44:55 split. Ethiopian trio Birhanu, Abebe Degefa and Debebe Tolossa along with Kenya's Eliud Kiplagat Barngetuny were running just a stride behind Maswai. Maswai weakened but was replaced by Solomon Bushendich and the five-man group reached reached 30km in 1:31:39. After 35km (1:47:53)

Birhanu and Degefa broke free and quickly opened up a big gap. They remained together until the last 500m when Birhanu kicked clear.

Fatuma Sado grabbed her fourth in 10 marathons. In third, 21-yearold Gong Lihua won the Chinese title in personal best with the world junior best holder (2:22:38 in 2008) Zhang Yingying rather short of that form in fourth.

The race has won unwelcome notoriety as many of the estimated 30,000 participants — although none of the elite field " were running with face masks to combat a blanket of smog which had descended.

The marathon's organizing committee said late on Saturday that postponing the event would be difficult because of all the planning that had gone into it, and asked competitors to understand, which generally seemed to be the case.

The environmental conditions deteriorated on Sunday morning sufficiently for Beijing's environmental centre to issue a warning suggesting children and the elderly to stay indoors.

Source: AIMSworldrunning.org

MEN:
1  Girmay BIRHANU                ETH  2:10:42
2  Abebe DEGEFA                      ETH  2:10:54
3  Debebe TOLOSSA                  ETH  2:11:07
4  Eliud KIplagat BARGETUNY     KEN  2:11:07
 
WOMEN:
1  Fatuma SADO                  ETH  2:30:03
2  Meseret KITATA                 ETH  2:31:08
3  Liha GONG                         CHN  2:32:23
4  Yingying ZHANG                 CHN  2:37:09