Sydney Olympic silver medallist Eric Wainaina of Kenya left Spain's Alberto Juzdado behind in the last five kilometres to win the Tokyo international men's marathon today.
The 28-year-old Japan-based Kenyan broke away at the 29km mark to shuffle a four-men front-running group and fought shoulder-to-shoulder against Juzdado until he spurted shortly after the 38km mark.
Wainaina clocked two hours, eight minutes and 43 seconds for a comfortable victory, beating his previous personal best of 2:10:17 when he won the Nagano Olympic memorial marathon in 2000.
Juzdado, the winner here in 1998 with his personal best and also third in 1996 and 2000, finished second in 2:08:59, ahead of fellow Spaniards Julio Rey third in 2:11:14, and Francisco Cortes fourth in 2:13:02.
"It's a dream come true. I wanted to run under 2:10, but it was very, very difficult. I'm really happy that I finally made it today," said Wainaina, also the bronze medallist at the Atlanta Olympics.
"But it was a very tough race for me. It's very cold and my feet didn't move at all. I felt my face witched with the cold," added Wainaina, who came to Japan in 1993 when he was 19 and won the Hokkaido marathon in his debut in 1994.
Some 20 runners formed a front-running group, which was reduced little by little and five runners, including Wainaina, Juzdado, Rey and South Korea's Baek Seung-Do, were competing for the lead until 28km.
Baek slowed down shortly afterwards, leaving Wainaina to controle the rest of the race.
The best local runner was Toshio Mano, who came in fifth in 2:14:13, while Baek came in sixth in 2:14:29.
AFP