Amateur wins Athens classic marathon
Greek amateur Christoforos Merousis won the
33rd Athens classic marathon on Sunday,
which this year excluded professionals.
The 33-year-old runner finished the 42
kilometre (26 mile) course in two hours,
21 minutes and 22 seconds, almost six
minutes faster than the runner up.
Because of financial issues the Greek
athletics federation SEGAS decided last
August to exclude elite runners from this
year’s competition so as to remain
within budget.
With an economic crisis in full bloom
the government has cut down drastically
on overspending at sports federations.
Last year’s competition was won in a
course record 2:10.37 by Kenya’s Felix
Kipchirchir Kandie followed by three of
his countrymen.
Second behind Merousis in this year’s
race was Dimitrios Theodorakakos in
2:27.03 and third was Dimosthenis
Evangelidis in 2:27.28.
The first non-Greek across the finish line
was 40-year-old Stefan Colaes of Belgium
in 2:45.32 in 21st place while the
women’s race was won by Japan’s
Minori Havakari,43, who clocked 2:52.06
and was 37th overall.
With bright, sunny conditions 14,728
people took part, around half the
number from those who ran last year.
The race began just a short distance from
the tumulus erected for the Greek dead
of the battle of Marathon and finished at
the all-marble Panathenaic Stadium, site
of the first modern Olympics in 1896.
According to legend, the distance from
Marathon to Athens was first run by
Pheidippides, an Athenian messenger
who in 490 BC dashed to the democratic
city states of Athens and Platea to
announce victory of the citizen soldiers
of Athens over forces from the Persian
empire, before keeling over and dying of
exhaustion.
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