Escrito por Lance!
Avon, CT (USA) - If you want to win the Boston Marathon or, for that matter, any other major marathon in the world, choose your parents carefully.
Make sure they are from Kenya or Ethiopia.
Both countries in East Africa.
Yes, being an African is not enough. They have to come from these two hilly countries in the eastern part of the continent.
It was was there that for millennia, generation after generation, a combination of geography, climate and natural evolution created the DNA that today is the single most important factor in selecting Olympic Marathon winners, Boston Marathon winners, Berlin Marathon winners, New York Marathon winners, London Marathon winners and so on...
The story was repeated today in Massachusetts, where, under a brilliant sky and temperatures hovering around 10 Celsius (idea for long distance running), the East Africans won again.
Both in the men's and the women's divisions.
No surprises there.
Look at the results:
Men:
1 - Evans Chebet, Kenya, in 2:06:51.
2 - Lawrence Cherono, Kenya, in 2:07:21.
3 - Benson Kipruto, Kenya, in 2:07:27.
Women:
1 - Peres Jepchirchir, Kenya, in 2:21:01
2 - Ababel Yeshaneh, Ethiopia, in 2:21:05
3 - Mary Ngugi, Kenya, in 2:21:32.
And so on and on.
Also, on and on in any other important marathon in the world. And even in the not so important ones.
History may have anointed the Greek soldier Pheidippides as the man who inspired the Marathon passion (and subsequent races) when he ran from the site of a battle against the Persians to announce to his fellow Athenians: "We won!, we won!".
But who knows what distance (and at what speed) East Africans were already running in those days, even before their countries had been created as they are now?
Europeans may have invented the Olympic Games, of which the Marathon is the most cherished event, Americans may have spread marathon mania all over the world.
Everybody today, in every country, runs marathons.
But it is the East Africans who always win.