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Feb-13-2008
Jeptoo & Prokopcuka to Challenge Grigoryeva at Boston Marathon
by David Monti
(c) Race Results Weekly, all rights reserved
Defending champion Lidiya Grigoryeva will face stiff challenges from Kenya's Rita Jeptoo and Latvia's Jelena Prokopcuka at the 112th edition of the Boston Marathon on Monday, April 21, organizers announced today.
Grigoryeva, who overcame rainy and windy weather at last year's race to earn her first Boston victory, will have to be at her best to beat Jeptoo, the 2006 Boston champion, or Prokopcuka, the two-time ING New York City Marathon winner.
"Winning Boston last year is my proudest accomplishment," said Grigoryeva through a media release. "The weather was terrible, but I was very happy to have won."
Jeptoo, who turns 27 on Friday, was a surprise winner in Boston in 2006, clocking a personal best 2:23:38. Later that year she won the bronze medal at the IAAF World Road Running Championships over 20 km, and finished fourth at the ING New York City Marathon. She finished fourth at Boston last year and was seventh at the IAAF World Championships marathon in Osaka last summer.
Prokopcuka, 31, has finished second at Boston twice, in 2006 and 2007. The charismatic runner is perhaps Latvia's best-known athlete in any sport, holding national records for 3000m, 5000m, 10,000m, the half-marathon and the marathon. Her marathon victories include Osaka in 2005 (2:22:56 NR), and New York in 2005 and 2006. She was the #6-ranked marathoner in the world in 2007 according to the Race Results Weekly rankings (Grigoryeva was #7).
John Hancock Financial, the primary sponsor of the Boston Marathon, also announced that an up and coming pair of Ethiopian runners, Askale Tafa Magarsa and Dire Tune, would be competing in Boston for the first time. Both athletes achieved personal best times in early season marathons in 2008. Magarsa was third at the Standard Chartered Dubai Marathon on January 18, in a career best 2:23:23, while Tune won the Houston Marathon on January 13, in 2:24:40. Both will face the difficulties of running another marathon off of a very short recovery period.
Other top entrants include Italian Bruna Genovese (2:25:28 PB), who was fourth at Boston in 2006; Russian Alevtina Biktimirova (2:25:12), who won last December's Honolulu Marathon; Ukrainian Tetyana Kuzina-Hladyr (2:25:44 NR), who won the 2006 Rome Marathon; Kenyan Magdaline Chemjor (2:28:16) who won last October's ING Amsterdam Marathon; and Ethiopian Robe Tola (2:24:35) who won the Conergy Hamburg Maathon in 2006.
The Boston Marathon, part of the World Marathon Majors series, is always held on Patriot's Day, a Massachusetts state holiday celebrated on the third Monday in April. This year's race will come one day after the USA Olympic Team Trials - Women's Marathon which will be held on a separate multi-loop course in Boston and nearby Cambridge. Both marathons will use the same finish line in Boston's Back Bay neighborhood.
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