Mutai and Kilel win Boston Marathon in style as American drought continues

BOSTON Kenya's Geoffrey Mutai has won the Boston Marathon in 2 hours, 3 minutes, 2 seconds - the fastest anyone has ever run the 26.2 mile distance.
The previous best of 2:03:59 was by Haile Gebrselassie in Berlin 2008. But because Monday’s race had a strong tailwind on a downhill course, Mutai’s run does not qualify as the fastest time ever.
But Mutai was almost three minutes better than the course record set just last year by Robert Kiprono Cheruiyot.
Fellow Kenyan Caroline Kilel won the women’s race, outsprinting American Desiree Davila to win by two seconds, in 2:22:36. Davila led as late as the final stretch on Boylston Street and ran the fastest time ever for a US woman, surpassing the 2:22:43 by Joan Benoit in 1983.
No American — man or woman — has won Boston since Lisa Larsen-Weidenbach in 1985.
Kilel and Mutai each earn $150,00 for the win, and Mutai gets Sh4 million for the world best and another Sh2 million for the course record.
Mutai and Moses Mosop ran side-by-side for the final miles before Mutai pulled ahead for good on Boylston Street and winning by four seconds. The 19th Kenyan winner in the past 21 years, Mutai raised his arms in the air and grinned.
STRAIGHT WIN
Masazumi Soejima and Wakako Tsuchida gave Japan a sweep of the men’s and women’s wheelchair divisions. It was the fifth straight win for Tsuchida and the second overall for Soejima.
Meanwhile Lineth Chepkurui ended last season as the top racer on the US road circuit. So far, this year is looking a lot like last year. The 24-year-old Kenyan, who last year won seven of the top road races in the country, crossed the finish line of Sunday morning’s third-annual BAA 5K in 15 minutes and 52 seconds, breaking the course record by more than a minute.
In a race she led from gun to tape, her only moments of fear came before she even arrived at the Copley Square starting line.
"In the morning I was worried because when I woke up it was pouring," Chepkurui confessed. "I was so afraid of the weather when I started."
But soon, the overnight downpour morphed into a breezy mist and by mid-race, the skies were clearing and the day began to turn bright. Not, however, as bright as Chepkurui’s post-race smile as she recalled the crowd support along the 3.1-mile urban loop course, which ran along Boylston Street toward the Public Garden and around the Boston Common, passing the State House before heading back toward the Boston Marathon finish line.
She will take home (Sh400,000) of the first-ever (Sh2.4 million) purse. —AP