MOSCOW, August 17 (R-Sport) - Uganda's Stephen Kiprotich won gold in the world athletics championships marathon in Moscow on Saturday.
Kiprotich, who is also the reigning Olympic champion, clocked 2:09:51 and finished the course with a wide lead over Ethiopia's Lelisa Desisa, who claimed silver at 2:10:12. Tadese Tola, another Ethiopian, took bronze at 2:10:23 and was followed by countryman Tsegay Kebede, the fourth-place finisher with a time of 2:10:47.
"I'm very happy," Kiprotich said. "Today I've made history again. I'm now the most famous person in the world."
Kiprotich, Desisa and Tola were in the lead group as the race approached the two-hour mark, but Tola fell back into a deep third with less than two kilometers remaining on the loop course that ran from Luzhniki, along the Moscow River to the Kremlin and back.
As Kiprotich and Desisa approached Luzhniki stadium, the 24-year-old Ugandan weaved back and forth in front of his challenger until a burst of speed gave him room to play with down the home stretch.
"After 40km, I decided that I could win, so I go ahead and start pushing and in the end I won," Kiprotich said. "I was running my own race and I wasn't running someone's race."
Kiprotich entered the stadium to sturdy applause from the Saturday evening crowd and threw his arms above his head as he crossed the finish line. While the marathon women endured 30-degree heat and heavy humidity last Saturday, the men enjoyed breezy temperatures in the low twenties.
It was Uganda's first worlds medal since 2007. Ethiopia picked up its seventh and eighth of the nine-day championships, which end on Sunday.
