42nd Las Vegas Marathon

The 42nd running of the Zappos.com Las Vegas Marathon was held in near perfect weather conditions and featured, for the third year, the Megabucks challenge. In the „challenge“ a mathematically calculated time differential between the elite women and elite men is made; this year is was 18 minutes and 3 seconds.

The elite women then start ahead of the men by the callculated differential amount. The first two years resulted in the men overtaking the woman; in 2006 in only the final kilometer. This year the Russian, Sylvia Skvortsova took off at a blistering pace and never looked back.
She began expanding the differential in the first 3 kilometers and finished in 2:29:01 gaining not only the $25,000 „Challenge“ bonus but a spot on the Russian olympic team for Beijing.

Several sub 2:10 runners failed in their attempts to catch Sylvia with the winner, Christopher Cheboibich, finishing in 2:16:49.

Of note, Tegla Loroupe ran in a non-competitive mode in support of her Peace Foundation yet managed to finish third amongst the women.

More than 16,000 runners were registered for the marathon and half marathon combine and came from all 50 of the United States and 42 foreign countries

Al Boka

CHRISTOPHER CHEBOIBICH (KEN) 02:16:49
JYNOCEL BASWETI (KEN) 02:17:41
PHILIP TANUI (KEN) 02:20:26
JOSEPHE KAHUGU (KEN) 02:21:13
MOSES TAYE (ETH) 02:22:39

SYLVIA SKVORTSOVA (RUS) 02:29:01
IRENE MOGAKA (KEN) 02:36:15
TEGLA LOUROUPE (KEN) 02:41:37
VIKTORYIA ZUEVA (RUS) 02:42:29
MARGARET NAKINTU (USA) 02:48:11