BOSTON — Even at the two-hour mark, the leaderboard in the women’s division of Monday’s Boston Marathon resembled a Green Line car pulling out of Park Street during the morning rush.
Twelve women were packed in a tight, jostling pack, and yet there was a oneness to it all, all those elbows, all those knees, moving as if choreographed. You’ll see these kinds of groupings at the starting line. You’ll see them in 5K’s. You just don’t see this many world-class runners sharing an elevator at the two-hour mark of a marathon.
But then there were only two runners. And then, one. That’s when Hellen Obiri of Kenya broke away from the pack, and then she broke away from countrywoman Sharon Lokedi, crossing the finish line in 2:22:37 to win Boston for a second straight time.
GO DEEPER
Boston Marathon: Lemma wins men’s race
What a finish. What a day. For while many of the half-million fans who attended the 128th Boston Marathon on this warm, sun-splashed day were mainly there for the tradition and pageantry of it all — and to cheer on their friends who were competing as cause-driven “charity runners” — this edition of the Hopkinton-to-Copley Square road race had so much more. It had mid-marathon drama. It had an upset. And it had that steel-cage match of a women’s race.
Free, daily sports updates direct to your inbox. Sign up
Free, daily sports updates direct to your inbox. Sign up
Buy
The mid-marathon drama: In the men’s wheelchair division, perennial champion Marcel Hug hugged an iron barricade just after the fabled Newton fire station, a crash that resulted in man and vehicle landing in a heap. He quickly righted himself and continued. And won Boston a seventh time — and with a course-record time of 1:15:33.
“It was my fault,” said Hug, 38, of the crash. “I had too much weight, too much pressure from above to my steering, so it didn’t steer properly … Luckily, nothing happened with the tires, so I could go forward.”
Marcel Hug of Switzerland and Eden Rainbow Cooper of Great Britain pose after winning the wheelchair divisions at Monday’s Boston Marathon. (Eric Canha / USA Today)
The upset: Ethiopian Sisay Lemma didn’t just run Boston. He ran away with Boston. He surged early, built a lead, kept the lead and finished in 2:06:17, a whopping 41 seconds ahead of second-place finisher Mohamed Esa of Ethiopia and — and here’s your upset — a little more than a minute ahead of marathon favorite Evans Chebet of Kenya, who was seeking his third consecutive Boston victory.
In three previous attempts to conquer Boston, Lemma had dropped out twice and posted a 30th-place finish.
“Several times after past races I joked that I was going to come to Boston and redeem myself,” Lemma said through a translator. “So I am very happy.”
Sisay Lemma of Ethiopia reacts as he crosses the finish line well ahead of his competitors in the men’s race. (Eric Canha / USA Today)
But in a year in which women’s college basketball is captivating America, this powerful women’s marathon division had Boston rocking. It began with American Emma Bates taking an early lead and for much of the day holding that lead, even if she allowed herself a few moments to high-five fans as the race passed through suburban Wellesley. She later joked about that, telling reporters what she told herself: “Did I just make a mistake? Am I losing seconds here?”
Some background: Bates, 31, suffered a torn plantar fascia in the Chicago Marathon this past October. She wasn’t expecting to be Boston strong in 2024.
Bates, who led most of last year’s race before settling for fifth place, came out hard again. “My coach had told me to go out and run your own race, just treat it like a long run with a little more pizzazz,” Bates said. “And I found myself in the lead over and over again.”
Eventually, the pack caught up with her. That’s when the steel-cage match began.
Asked what it was like in that crowd, second-place finisher Lokedi said, “I think it’s just being aware if a move is being made, you just try to make sure you’re staying within that range and that you’re not letting a gap open up.”
Said Obiri: “Sometimes you try to communicate when you’re in a crowd of, like, 15 people. You have to be careful when you get your water. And you talk to each other.”
Third-place finisher Edna Kiplagat of Kenya put it magnificently: “I look around and I think we could have been in 16th (place) or first (place) … I knew from there that anyone could make a move.”
Obiri and Lokedi made the move. And then Obiri made that last move, the one that settled matters.
“I said, ‘Let me go,’ because … anyone is there, anybody can win the race,” Obiri said. “So, for me, I (said) let me do the work now, let me push the pace.”
She ran the final 4.2 miles in a sub-5-minute-mile pace. Arriving at the underpass beyond Kenmore Square and before the right turn on Hereford Street, she was absolutely sprinting.
To borrow a line from Edna Kiplagat, Obiri could have finished 16th. She finished first.
Emma Bates finished 12th.
“I’m proud of finishing,” she said. “I’m proud of pushing myself and the efforts I put into it. Finishing 12th isn’t quite what I expected or hoped for, but there are so many women in the group … and I wasn’t able to have the wheels at the end. Especially since they threw down a 4:40 mile toward the end and I’m just not there yet.”
Oh, she’s there. She attended a party of the world’s best women marathoners, a party held on one of the great marathon stages. Could have been first, could have been 16th. She was somewhere in-between, 12th.
But only six women have won Boston and then defended Boston. Obiri is one of them.
“I (said), ‘Let me fight, let me fight,’” Obiri said. “Because when I’m on the road, I see my daughter and my husband … if I win, I can make them all say, ‘Oh my.’”
Best women runners. A great stage. A steel-cage match. And then, finally, a winner.
Oh my.
(Top photo of Hellen Obiri of Kenya crossing the finish line to win the women’s division in Monday’s Boston Marathon: Paul Rutherford / Getty Images)
