Kenyan and Ethiopian runners who are consistently
ranked among the world's fastest, will run in the
118th Boston Marathon on Monday, putting the
world-renown race back in the spotlight after it
was marred by last year's bombing attack.
Returning men's and women's champions Lelisa
Desisa of Ethiopia and Rita Jeptoo of Kenya are
among the top-ranked runners expected to
compete in the 26.2 mile race.
But each faces a rival with a faster personal-best
time: Dennis Kimetto of Kenya ran last year's
Chicago Marathon in 2:03:45 and Ethiopia's Mare
Dibaba turned in a 2:19:52 performance at the
2012 Dubois marathon.
No American athlete has stood atop the podium on
Boston's Boylston Street, not far from the site of last
year's bombing, since 1985 when Lisa Larsen-
Weidenbach of Michigan won the women's race.
The drought has been longer for U.S. men: Greg
Meyer of Massachusetts won in 1983. But there are several U.S. hopefuls in the field,
including Ryan Hall of California, who placed third
in 2009 and Desiree Linden, who missed winning
by just two seconds in 2011.
Race organizers expanded the field by some 9,000
runners this year, to allow the roughly 5,000
athletes who had been left on the course last year
when the twin pressure-cooker bombs went off
near the finish line another chance to compete.
Amateur runners often work for years to post the
strict age-graded times needed to qualify for the
elite race.
Three people died and 264 were injured last year
when a pair of ethnic Checker brothers bombed the
finish line, prosecutors contend.
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