In the most dramatic and competitive Olympic marathon maybe ever, Sifan Hassan of the Netherlands officially became an athlete for the ages.
With a surge in the final 250 meters, Hassan withstood a shove from Tigst Assefa of Ethiopia and pulled off one of the most remarkable trebles in distance running history.
In the span of a week, she won bronze medals in the 5,000 and 10,000 on the track and then sprinted to the gold medal in the marathon Sunday morning, less than 26 hours after capturing that bronze in the 10,000.
The great cliche of marathon racing — “great” because it’s so true — is that “20 miles is halfway.” In so many races, the first 80 percent of the marathon is basically transportation, and then the real racing begins, and the energy required to race in those final 10 kilometers, is about equal to what a fit distance runner has expended just to get to that point.
Or that’s what it feels like anyway, even though 10 kilometers, or 6.2 miles, is probably the most basic of training runs, the sort of distance the fastest long-distance runners in the world can cover in their sleep.
And that’s what shook out on Sunday on the streets of Paris and its western outskirts. At 20 miles, this marathon became a competition between a collection of marathon running royalty.
Sharon Lokedi, Peres Jepchirchir and Hellen Obiri of Kenya; Assefa of Ethiopia and her teammate Amane Shankule; and right in the middle of them, Sifan Hassan of the Netherlands. Those runners hold spots, 1, 2, 3, 4, and 11 in the world rankings. The wild card was Yuka Suzuki of Japan.
Jepchirchir would fall off first, unable to keep up with the push toward the Eiffel Tower. Then Suzuki fell back.
With a little more than four miles to go, it was a race among five of the best for three spots on the podium. Two Kenyans, two Ethiopians, and a Dutch runner who came to the Netherlands as a refugee from Ethiopia when she was 15 years old.
Hassan was doing what she always does, hanging back, so patient, so good at driving everyone else mad because she knows that they know that she knows she is faster than any of them down the stretch, capable of winning on any given day at any distance between one mile and 26.2.
She waited and waited until the last moment she could, and then provided it, forcing the world’s top-ranked marathoner to try to shove her off course, a last desperate hopeless move to stop the inevitable.
Hassan won in an Olympic record time of 2:22.55, three seconds ahead of Assefa and 15 seconds faster than Obiri, who took the bronze medal.
(Photo of Sifan Hassan celebrating Sunday’s win: Jorist Verwijst / BSR Agency / Getty Images)
