Feyisa Lilesa of Ethiopia (2:09:54) and Galem Rupp of the United States (2:10:05) won the silver and bronze respectively. It might have been his slowest ever winning time by over three minutes, but Kipchoge judged the race to perfection, clocking splits of 65:55 and 62:49 to leave his rivals trailing in his wake.
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The eight-time US champion, Rupp admitted he was devastated when he didn’t make it onto the podium in the 10,000 back on August 13 and needed a few days to get over the loss.
Earlier in Rio, Jemima Sumgong won the women’s marathon.
Kipchoge, who missed the 2012 Games, was a favourite coming in as the dominant marathoner of the past couple years, and he took the lead for good after the 30-kilometre mark.
Rupp ran his second career marathon Sunday and collected his second career Olympic medal with a strong third-place finish in the famed Sambadrome, the parade ground for Rio’s Carnival.
Brazil’s men’s volleyball team defeated Italy in straight sets Sunday to win its third gold medal in the sport.
Meanwhile, silver medallist Lilesa protested the brutal police crackdowns in Ethiopia of the Oromo people by crossing his arms above his head when he crossed the finish line and later at a press conference. He finished with a winning time of 2:08.44.
The race got underway in miserable wet conditions with Nurundi’s Abraham Niyonkuru leading at the 5km mark in 15:31. Then runners started breaking away with Kipchoge, Rupp and Lilesa turning the marathon into a three-man race. Hawkins, wearing a backwards baseball cap, passed that point in 69th. Sergio Rodriguez made two free throws with 5.4 seconds left and the Spaniards, who captured silver in 2008 at Beijing and the London Games, got the defensive stop they needed.
The strategy led to some unintentional humor in the last half of the race, when at one point Kipchoge accelerated to a water station. He surged into a solo lead and put 5 seconds on Lelisa in the next minute.
Nearly an hour in and Callum Hawkins found himself leading the front pack, though it didn’t last for too long as Kenya’s Wesley Korir made his way to the front to lead at the halfway point.
He firmly separated himself from Lilesa and Rupp with around eight kilometers (five miles) to go.
“Given that he is from Oromo, the most targeted and marginalized group of people in Ethiopia in economic and political realm, he is likely to be taken by government security force at the Addis Ababa airport upon arrival”, Gabisa, a visiting academic fellow at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Va., said in an email to The Times.
Meb Keflezighi, an Eritrean-born American who lives in San Diego, won a silver medal at the 2004 Summer Olympics.
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His brother Derek, who finished in 114th place in 2:29.24, said he had found the race tough, having only just returned from injury. The other Kenyans – Stanley Biwott and Wesley Korir failed to finish with the former suffering muscle cramps.
