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Feb-20-2009
As Promised, RAK Half Delivers Fast Times
by David Monti
(c) Race Results Weekly, all rights reserved
The third annual RAK Half-Marathon in Ras Al Khaimah, United Arab Emirates, today delivered fast times as promised, despite pesky winds which may have thwarted a new men's world record.
The target for the men was Samuel Wanjiru's world record of 58:33, and with pacemaking help Ethiopian Deribe Merga and Kenyan Patrick Makau went after it, enticed by the USD 100,000 world record bonus. They hit 5 km in 13:41 and 10 km in 27:42. Merga, fourth at the Beijing Olympic Marathon, opened a slight gap on Makau over the next 5 km, but Makau fought his way back. In the second blast of headwind between 16 and 18 km, Merga began to slow, giving Makau his opening for victory. The two-time IAAF World Half-Marathon Championships silver medalist got to the finish line first, notching a personal best 58:52, the second fastest half-marathon ever. It was also Makau's second sub-59 minute performance of his career.
As for Merga, fatigue finally caught up to him in the final kilometers, allowing Kenyan Wilson Kiprotich to pass him. Kiprotich got second in a personal best 58:59, making him just the fifth athlete in history to crack 59 minutes. Merga was third in 59:18, followed by Kenyans Wilson Chebet (59:32 PB) and Matthew Koech (59:54 PB).
The top-20 men --all from Africa-- ran 65:38 or better.
The women's race did not start as aggressively as the men's, going through 5 km in 16:12 and 10 km in 32:14. But three Ethiopians, Dire Tune, Aselefech Mergia and Abebu Gelan, and one Kenyan, Philes Ongori, put the hammer down and clocked 15:39 for the next 5-K, breaking open the race. It was Tune who would show the most strength in the closing kilometers, pulling clear in the last 5 km to get the win in a national record 1:07:18. She ran the last 1097m in just 3:36. The next four women all set personal best times: Mergia, 1:07:48; Ongori, 1:07:50; Gelan, 1:07:57 and Kenyan Lydia Cheromei, 1:08:14. Remarkably, every woman in the top-10 smashed Berhane Adere's 2007 course record of 1:10:58.
The organizers' strategy of subjecting athletes to 50% prize money cuts if they didn't run fast times (sub-60:00 for top-5 men, sub-69:00 for top-5 women and sub-71:00 for 6-10 women), clearly worked in practice. Not a single athlete in the top-10 was subjected to a reduction, and the women's course record was shattered. Both Makau and Tune earned USD 28,000 in prize money.
The race recorded 731 individual finishers.
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