Amane Beriso, winner in Valencia with the third best mark in history.Kai FORSTERLING (EFE)
The Valencia marathon was the marathon of all wonders, as advertised with great hype, although not all as expected. There were records of all kinds, from the test of Spain, from the fastest marathons ever run in Spain, there were historic records, and there was a collapse which the celebrated star of the previous day, Ethiopian Letesenbet Gidey, beat.
If Gidey had broken the announced world record on his debut at the Valencia Marathon, the world would have admired his performance, opened his mouth, healed his hiccups, and yet his astonishment would have been even less than what he produced, accompanied by perplexity. and a sudden and painful loss of innocence, the end result of the race with the phenomenal Gidey collapsing in the wall at kilometer 36 before completing two hours of the race, and the unexpected brilliance of his Ethiopian compatriot Amane Beriso, who won by a time of 2h 14m 58s, the third best mark in history (54s from the world record). She is the third woman to run the 42.195km in under 2h 15m, after record holder Brigid Kosgei (2h 14m 4s) and fellow Kenyan Ruth Chepngetich (2h 14.18s).
Someone explain, the experts cried, how it is possible that Beriso, a 31-year-old athlete with a best score of 2h 20m 48s six years ago, who has not only run two marathons since 2020, reached the last , in Mexico in the last August, this was achieved. And nobody knew what to answer.
At the limit of your reserves
Almost two minutes later, 111 seconds lost over six kilometers, the metronome Gidey arrives, who becomes dizzy, almost faints after crossing the finish line, forcing her body to the limit of her strength (and wise men remember, unsuspectingly she could drink her precious liquid don’t take it when you first refresh yourself, which certainly left its mark), but at least the world record holder over 5,000 m, 10,000 m and half marathon with a time of 2:16:49 has the best mark that no rookie has ever achieved (the previous one, 2h 17m 20s, by Almaz Ayana) and the fifth in history.
The morning was happy not only for the 30,000 popular runners who completed the test, but also for a young Kenyan, who turned 23 on Friday, Kelvin Kiptum, who won the men’s test (2h 1m 54s) and a 37-year-old The Spaniard named Marta Galimany, the pure definition of a tenacious and persistent marathon runner, the embodiment of the balance between cleverness and daring, the limit that must never be crossed, and with a time of 2:26:14 hours the Spanish Record broke the event, one of the oldest records on the national list, held since October 1995 by Ana Isabel Alonso (2h 26m 51s).
Kiptum, a promising rookie because his half marathon mark, which he already reached two years ago in Valencia, is 58:42, after his first 42.195 kilometers he has suddenly become the third fastest marathon runner in 2:1:53 with a time of 2:1:53 of history, in one of only three, along with the untouchable record holder Eliud Kipchoge (2h 1m 9s) and the legendary Kenenisa Bekele (2h 1m 41s), who fell back from 2h 2m, a mark that until recently seemed impossible. Kiptum played with the rabbits, more aware of World Champion Ethiopian Tamirat Tola than anyone, and they all got stuck just after 25km.
Then Kiptum, exuberantly, began playing with everyone, as did Zatopek, who in his first marathon, that of the Helsinki 52 Games, asked his rivals if they didn’t think the pace was too fast for such a long race. They found themselves confused on, he accelerated and left her stuck. So Kiptum, who at kilometer 30 looks at Tola and the Tanzanian Gabriel Geay, the last survivors, and gestures to them to let him go a little, which he can’t do. With no one paying attention to him, he speeds up and checks that it’s not because they didn’t want to, it’s because they can’t. “Hehe,” says Kiptum, who trains alone in Kenya. “Seeing her like this, I said to myself, well, I’ll go alone.”
Gidey walks so calmly, so calmly, his rhythm so regular, his body so immobile that only a cheesy or Juan Ramón would find the perfect metaphors, something like poetry in motion, like he slides more than he walks, he swims or something , and by his side all the men trying to keep up with him are chavs, weekend travelers with their mouths up. But he runs real and at full speed. A violent speed. Atomic. And there he is running, coming out calm (he completes the half-marathon in 67 minutes 18 seconds, a step ahead of a second half scheduled in 66 mere minutes, whose rhythm is nailed to kilometer 35, and only the stopwatches every five kilometers let us know if he’s driving very fast or very slow, because it doesn’t change.
Beriso signed up for the marathon thinking that Letesenbet’s presence would benefit him. The male rabbits were intended only for her compatriot, but she surprised them by sneaking into the circle, and for 35 kilometers she marks the favorite, walks by her side, hears her breath and perceives minimal signs of exhaustion and can do that know Something is wrong with Gidey’s mechanism and she doesn’t even have to accelerate, just keep her rhythm to overcome the rabbits, always waiting for her teacher, and rush towards victory and a dazzling goal.
“My head doesn’t think as much as my legs when I’m running,” says Tariku Novales, the 24-year-old Galician marathoner who finished 16th and became the first Spaniard in a tough battle with national record holder Ayad Lamdassem, and has in the second marathon of his career, he clocked a time of 2h 7m 18s that he hadn’t even counted, fifteen minutes faster than in Madrid in May. “I came with nothing on my mind, just out of fear because I was afraid of getting hurt,” adds Novales, who was coached in Madrid by Juan del Campo and Luismi Berlanas and has had a great promise in Spanish athletics since his youth Growth is sometimes more complicated than I expected. “I didn’t even think about going into the Lamdassem group to break the Spanish record (2h 6m 25s) with rabbits or anything special.”
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