John Kelai (KEN) wins the 2003 Singapore Marathon (© c)
Not many major marathon races can claim an event record dating back 20 years, and the organizers of the Standard Chartered Singapore Marathon are hoping this is one dubious honor they can be without after this Sunday’s annual edition.
In 1984 Sweden’s Tommy Persson ran 42.195 kilometers through Singapore in 2:18:30. Alain Lazare of New Caledonia gave the course record a scare a year later (2:19:04), but then nobody even broke 2:20 until two years ago. Kenyan Joseph Riri won in 2:18:46 and last year countryman John Kelai reached the finish in 2:19:02. (Note: the course route has varied over the past two decades, but many of the same roads have been used through the various editions.)
Kelai will defend his title against a deep field that could see not only a new record but a time well under 2:18. A big reason for that gathering has to do with an unprecedented amount of prize money available. First place will be worth $25,000, second place $15,000 and third place $8,000, all part of a grand total of $140,000 awarded for various categories.
Kelai is confident he can be the first male to repeat in the Singapore Marathon. First, he is coming off a big personal best of 2:10:52 when he won in Brussels last October 10. Second he knows what it is like to run in Singapore’s arduous conditions where temperatures can reach 30 degrees with humidity near 100 percent even given the 6 a.m. start.
“I want to be aware of any move around the half-way point, because that’s where I’ll know who is the strongest,” says Kelai about the race, believing though that he, too, is stronger than last year following an extended stint of high altitude training.
After living and training in Singapore from July 2002 to December 2003, Kelai returned to his native Kenya where he trained near Eldoret with countrymen Moses Kigen and Eliud Sang. He arrived back in Singapore on Thursday after a few weeks in Bangkok, re-acclimatizing to both the tropical weather and the local time zone.
“The field is very strong,” Kelai acknowledges considering the number of east Africans in the starting lineup. The most feared contender would surely be former champion Riri, coming off a speedy personal best of 2:06:49 when he was second in Berlin this past September.
Other sub-2:10 men include Semeretu Alemayehu (2:07:45 PR), Philip Tanui (2:09:56), Leonid Shvetsov (2:09:16) and Dmitri Kapitanov (2:09:32).
A trio of sub-2:30 east European winners could challenge the women’s course record of 2:36:06. Renata Paradovska of Poland has the fastest personal best time of 2:27:17 from Boston in 1998 and Natalya Galushka of Belarus and Lydia Vassilevskaya of Russia have both run 2:29.
Sunday’s marathon will actually be just one part of a running festival which includes a half-marathon, 10-K and a children’s race. More than 14,000 are entered in one of the events, an impressive 46 percent increase over 2003 figures.
Title sponsor Standard Chartered Bank is also promoting a competition called “The Greatest Race of Earth,” a series of four marathons – Nairobi, Singapore, Mumbai and Hong Kong – with substantial prize money for top scoring relays, individuals and national teams.
Two Kenyan women marathon legends, Tegla Loroupe and Joyce Chepchumba, will take part in the half-marathon as will blind marathon world-record holder Henry Wanyoike.
