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Ethiopia’s Gotytom Gebreslase ran the fastest, but Sara Hall, Emma Bates, and Keira D’Amato got the biggest cheers from the crowd at Monday morning’s world championship marathon in Eugene, Oregon.
Running in front of the home crowd, Hall, Bates, and D’Amato smartly hung back in the chase back for the first half of the race and then began to work their way up as some of the runners in the original lead pack began to blow up.
Hall (39, Crested Butte, Colorado) was the best of the bunch, surging throughout the final 8 miles of the race to place fifth in a season-best 2:22:10. She passed Kenya’s Angela Tanui (6th, 2:22:15) in the final mile but ran out of room in her pursuit of fourth-place finisher Nazaret Weldu of Eritrea (2:20:29). Hall’s finish was the best showing by an American woman in the world championships marathon since Amy Cragg earned the bronze in 2017 in London.
Bates (29, Boulder, Colorado) followed a similar strategy and wasn’t far behind in seventh in a new personal best of 2:23:18. D’Amato (37, Richmond, Virginia), who originally had gone out a bit harder only to get stuck in between the first two packs, eventually settled in with the chase pack alongside Hall, Bates, and British runner Jess Piasecki and Uganda’s Immaculate Chemutai.
Hall, Bates, and D’Amato received roaring cheers from the crowd along the course that sent runners between Eugene and nearby Springfield, especially along the finish chute on Dr. Martin Luther King Drive. None had represented Team USA at a global outdoor championship before.
They were greeted at the finish line by American running legend Joan Benoit Samuelson, who won the 1984 Olympic marathon and served as the official starter of the women’s world championships race.
Gebreslase matched the spectacular effort of her countryman Tamirat Tola, who won the men’s race 24 hours earlier, by winning the women’s world title in a championship record of 2:18:11. The 27-year-old, who made her marathon debut with a victory in Berlin last year, was the best among the lead group of nine runners that went out at sub-2:17 pace and separated immediately from a secondary pack amid cool mid-50s temperatures.
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Defending world champion Ruth Chepngetich of Kenya, the pre-race favorite, was in that lead pack pushing the pace, along with Ethiopia’s Ababel Yeshaneh and Ashete Bekere. Not much changed during the first two laps of the race, but the pace eventually proved too hot for many runners and all three wound up stepping off the course and failing to finish.
Chepngetich’s teammate Judith Korir took the lead midway through the race and ran strong off the front several miles, but Gebreslase caught her and the two ran stride for stride over the final lap of the three-loop course. Gebreslase eventually broke away for the win with a little more than a mile to go.
Gebreslase bettered Paula Radcliffe’s world championship mark of 2:20:57 set in 2005 in Helsinki. Korir didn’t fade, but sprinted hard to the finish in a new personal best of 2:18:20.
A year after she had dropped out of bronze medal contention at the Olympics in Sapporo, where she slumped to 66th after having to stop with cramps, Israel’s 33-year-old Lonah Salpeter took a triumphant third in 2:20:18.