Ethiopian Hurisa shines
Mumbai, Jan. 19: Hurisa wasn’t the the favourite for Tata Mumbai Marathon 2020 but the Ethiopian upset the odds to win in a course record of 2:08:09 here on Sunday.
Hurisa was rewarded with his biggest ever pay day, a $45,000 winners cheque and a $15,000 course record bonus.
The amount he picked up on Sunday for his stunning win was more than he had pocketed across his entire career.
In addition, the race was won with a pair of borrowed racing shoes.
“I misplaced my shoes while travelling from Addis Ababa to Mumbai earlier in the week. So I borrowed some shoes from my friend Abraham Girma (who also ran the Tata Mumbai Marathon). So I only tried them on for the first time yesterday,” Hurisa revealed after the race.
In a thrilling finish to the 17th edition of TMM, three men approached the last kilometre together, but Hurisa went through the gears as the trio passed that check
point and he pulled away from his compatriots Ayele Abshero and Birhanu Teshome.
Abshero and Teshome finished second and third respectively in a time of 2:08:20 and 2:08:26, both coming inside the previous course record of 2:08:35. Prior to Sunday,
22-year-old Hurisa’s most notable achievement was winning the silver medal in the African Cross Country Championships U20 race four years ago.
This was Hurisa’s second international win, the other being a low-key half marathon in Turkey in 2017. The men’s race started at a pace which indicated a course record was on the cards, and the weather was several degrees cooler.
A large group of 18 men, including pacemakers, sped through the 10km marker in 30.01, 20km in 1:00:35 and hit the halfway mark in 1:03:52.
However, as the second half of the race progressed, runners started to regularly drop off the back of the leading pack with the leaders passing 30km in 1:30:52 although eight men still remained in contention at 35km.
As the runners passed the 36km marker, Teshome put his head down and started pumping his arms, attempting to almost sprint away from his rivals.
With four kilometres left, Hurisa, Abshero and Teshome still had Uganda’s 2013 Mumbai Marathon winner Jackson Kiprop for company and their Ethiopian compatriot Abera Kuma, after going through a bad patch, was back in contention.