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Korir, Kiplagat Win LA Marathon
Organizers billed the course as having a "landmark every mile."
Monday, Mar 22, 2010 | Updated 8:19 AM PDT
AP
Los Angeles marathon defending champion Wesley Korir, Kenya, right, and Tariku Jufar, Ethiopia, who came in second last year, participate in a news conference at Dodgers stadium's in Los Angeles Friday, March 19, 2010. The 2010 Honda LA Marathon will be the first run from the stadium to the Pacific Ocean. Korir set a course record of 2:08:24 in 2009.
Wesley Korir of Kenya was the fastest man in the 25 annual LA Marathon for the second consecutive year while fellow countrywoman Edna Kiplagat won the women's division.
Korir was timed at 2:09:19, the third fastest time in race history.
Kiplagat won a $100,000 bonus as top overall finisher and completed the 26-mile, 385-yard course from Dodger Stadium to Santa Monica in two hours, 25 minutes, 38 seconds, the third fastest women's time in the race's history.
The elite women's field was given an 18-minute, 47-second head start over its male counterparts, determined by a formula involving the runners' lifetime best times.
The male and female winners both received $20,000 and a 2010 Honda Insight EX sedan. Kiplagat also received a $25,000 time bonus for matching the 20th-fastest women's marathon time of 2009.
The "Challenge Bonus" has been offered seven times, with women winning four times. The same sex has never won two consecutive races.
Kiplagat's victory ends an 11-race winning streak by women from the former Soviet Union. Russian women had won the last five races and seven of the last nine. Kenyan men have won 12 consecutive races.
No U.S. runner has won the race since 1994, when Paul Pilkington won the men's race and Olga Appell was the women's winner. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa fired the starting gun that sent a field of nearly 25,000 runners, the race's largest field since 2006, off on a course that went outside Los Angeles' city limits in its history.
Organizers billed the course as having a "landmark every mile," including Los Angeles City Hall, Echo Park, Grauman's Chinese Theatre, the Sunset Strip and Rodeo Drive. Rodeo Drive.
The latter parts of the race, officially known as the Honda Los Angeles Marathon, included Century City, the Veterans Administration grounds and Brentwood's San Vicente Boulevard, concluding at Santa Monica Boulevard and Ocean Avenue near the Santa Monica Pier.
The new course was part of an effort by its new owners, a group controlled by Los Angeles Dodgers co-owner Frank McCourt, to reverse declining interest in the race. Entrants had declined steadily from a record 25,947 in 2006 to 17,307 last year, which was run in late May.
Play the video below for a timelapse view of the marathon as it moves through Silver Lake.
