Women champs complain of too many obstructions
MUMBAI: The 15th edition of the Mumbai Marathon turned out to be a delight for the amateur running enthusiasts, but for the elite, Sunday morning’s 42.195km run was full of hurdles and disruptions as Ethiopians Solomon Deksisa and Amane Gobena lived up to their ‘favourites’ tag to clinch the respective men’s and women’s titles.
The elite marathon kicked-off at 7:10am as scheduled. But as the professionals made their way through the streets of South Mumbai, closing in on the Bandra-worli sea link — about 15km into the marathon — they were confronted with a variety of complications. The weather, the pacesetters and the heavy contingent of joggers had all begun to play their roles in dictating who the winner would be.
Gobena — the fastest woman to take the track on Sunday — finished the race in 2 hours 25 minutes and 49 seconds in first place. Last year’s champion Bornes Kitur of Kenya finished in second at 2:28:48 as Ethopian Shoko Gen- emo followed suit at 2:29:41 for third place. But for Gobena and Kitur, the latest edition of city’s esteemed race was not as smooth as expected. Gobena chose to give drinks a miss at the 5K, 15K and 30K marks due to the energy and seconds that might have been wasted in maneuvering around the joggers that had begun to stray into the path of the elites. In fact, Gobena only managed to overtake Bornes and build a sizeable lead during a water-break the latter had taken.
“There were a lot of people on the road and it was very difficult to get water. But I knew I was going to win the race by the 25k mark. In fact, I was even thinking of going for the record but there were just too many people. It was difficult to focus on the race. The temperature had also begun to rise and so I could not push myself after 35k. It was a difficult race,” Gobena said. Kitur also shared similar sentiments. “The construction work was also a problem in the final stretch (the final stretch was altered due to metro construction work).”