The first gold medal of the World Athletics Championships in Qatar has been taken: the Kenyan top favorite Ruth Chepngetich won gold in the marathon in Doha. The 25-year-old ran at 2:32 local time on Saturday morning after 2:32:43 hours to the finish and prevailed clearly ahead of Bahrain defending champion Rose Chelimo (2:33:46). Bronze brought surprisingly the already 39-year-old Helalia Johannes from Namibia (2:34:15).
Chepngetich, with a 2:17:08 hour third-fastest marathoner in history in Dubai in January, triumphed in a brutal heat battle with the slowest winning time in World Cup history. She stayed more than two minutes ahead of her compatriot Catherine Ndereba's previous mark, which in 2007 also won the slowest world championship marathon in 2:30 minutes in the equally hot Osaka.
At midnight, the Corniche, the Doha waterfront, was extremely harsh with 32.7 degrees and 73.3 percent humidity. Accordingly, there were many failures during the marathon. Only 40 of the 68 started athletes made it to the finish, which corresponds to a failure rate of more than 40 percent. In the similarly tough race of Osaka in 2007, 57 of 66 starters had made it to the finish line.
REUTERS / Hannah Mckay
Some runners like Italy's Giovanna Epis had to give up exhausted
Despite the temperatures, the Kenyan women started at a very high pace, the field quickly diverge. The Italian Sara Dossena, EM sixth of Berlin 2018, had to give up after a good quarter of the distance exhausted and was driven in a wheelchair from the track.
- In the record: So ran the marathon of women
The race was much slower and more tactical long before the half-marathon mark. Seven kilometers from the finish, Chepngetich then made the decisive attack at a feeding station.
Due to the heat in Qatar with daytime temperatures over 40 degrees, the road competitions were postponed into the night. The walkers and goers will be sent on Saturday over 50 km only at 23.30 clock local time (22:30 CEST) on the trip, in the finish they will be between 3.15 and 4.00 clock in the morning. The men's marathon will take place during the night from 5 to 6 October.
