Wanjiru Sets OR to Win Marathon

I couldn't have been more wrong about the Olympic marathon.

I thought the weather would be hot, humid, and oppressive. But after overnight rain, it was bright and clear for the start, and not too hot for the early miles. Eventually the temperature would rise into the 80s, but the the humidity was relatively low, a big plus for the early front-runners.

I was sure it would be a slow race with a huge cautious pack eye-ing each other nervously through 12-13 miles. Instead, the pace was fast from the get-go, with Kenyan Luke Kibet and Ethiopian Deriba Merga leading a pack of 8 runners through 10K in 29:25, and 20K in 59:10 -- sub 2:05 pace!

I thought the Americans would be up there in the lead pack, but they weren't taking their chances with that kind of go-for-broke crazy running, and they were never near the lead.

I thought the "Kenyan curse" would prevail, but Sammy Wanjiru won the country's first gold medal.

The Kenyans had decided that a slow early pace favored the Europeans. As Martin Lel said, “the idea was to make this like London,” explained Lel. “Run it fast and hard, especially in the first half. We realised that in the Olympics if there is a slow pace in the first half then Kenyans are trapped because the Europeans and others will be very strong in the later stages. So we knew our tactics had to be to fight hard in the first half so we could cut them off with a fast pace.”

I thought Carlos Lopes' Olympic record 2:09:21 from way back in 1984 was safe, but the 21-year-old Wanjiru -- the world record holder at the half marathon -- survived the early pace and absolutely crushed Lopes' record, running a surreal 2:06:32. The early pace killed almost everyone else in that lead pack (Morrocco's Jaouad Gharib ran 2:07:16 for Silver, but Lel faded to 5th (2:10:24), and no one else broke 2:10.)

Ultimately, Dathan Ritzenheim and Ryan Hall made a good showing, moving up to finish 9th and 10th, but this day the race belonged to the front-runners.