| English.news.cn 2011-08-27 19:07:11 |  Feedback  Print RSS  |
DAEGU, South Korea, Aug. 27 (Xinhua) -- Edna Ngeringwony Kiplagat of Kenya, the newly-crowned world marathon champion and a mother of two, has attributed her success to support from her husband and their children, the IAAF website said Saturday in a report.
Kiplagat led the Kenyan sweep in the women's marathon and took the first gold medal of the World Championships in this South Korean city on Saturday morning, by clocking 2:28.43 hours.
The victory made the 31-year-old runner the second Kenyan woman after Catherine Ndereba to win the World Marathon title.
And it took her more than eight years of hard training. It also required her husband Gilbert Koech to give up his own aspirations as an athlete and focus solely on coaching his wife.
Kiplagat said her whole family got behind her, including eight year-old son Carlos, and four year-old daughter Wendy.
"What I can say, especially my husband he has been helping me a lot," Kiplagat said.
"And also my children who give me enough time to do my training. What I can say is the most important thing is to get support from the family."
Kiplagat made her debut at the distance in Las Vegas in 2005, but ended up with a disappointing 2:50:20. She finished in tenth place, and won just 500 U.S. dollars.
"I think my first Marathon when I ran in 2005, I didn't do well," she recalled. "So, I had to do my road races until I improved. When I started running last year and started getting experiences in my races, I learned the difference between road races and Marathon."
In 2010, Kiplagat claimed wins at the Los Angeles and New York City Marathons. The win in the Los Angeles Marathon earned her 145,000 U.S. dollars plus a car. Last November, Kiplagat took another major victory at the London Marathon with a person best of 2:20.46.
With world champion in Daegu, Kiplagat will now return to New York to defend her title. After that, she hopes to focus on the 2012 Olympic Marathon in London, should Kenya select her for the team.
"Being the first time representing my company in a championships, I'm very happy because I didn't know that I was going to be a winner," she said. "Being the winner today I'm pretty happy."
Editor: Fang Yang |
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