Cheruiyot and Tune win Boston Marathon titles

Defending champion Robert Cheruiyot of Kenya won his fourth Boston Marathon in six years yesterday, while Ethiopia's Dire Tune took the women's crown in a dramatic finish.

Cheruiyot, the first Kenyan man to win four Boston Marathons after victories in 2003, 2006 and 2007, controlled the pace through the hilly Boston suburbs and was followed in second place by Abderrahime Bouramdane of Morocco.

The 29-year-old Kenyan put distance between himself and a thinning pack of runners at about one-and-a-half hours into the race but slowed in the final stretch to miss by 32 seconds his own 2006 course record.

"It was a tough race. Boston is not that easy. The course is very difficult," he told a news conference after winning the $150,000 winner's prize and a likely chance to represent Kenya at the Beijing Olympics in August.

It was the 16th time since 1991 that a Kenyan has won the world's oldest annually contested marathon.

The real drama was in the women's field, where Tune and Russia's Alevtina Biktimirova battled shoulder-to-shoulder through the final stages with both runners sprinting ahead of the other in the final yards in the closest finish in the history of the women's race in Boston.

"I am happy to be winning in Boston," said Tune, 22, who placed second in last year's Olympic Commemoration Marathon in Nagano, Japan.

Biktimirova, 25, said she lacked power. "I wanted to win very badly. I was fighting until the end," she said. "In the end I just didn't have enough speed."

In the men's race, Cheruiyot finished the 112th edition of the Boston Marathon in an official time of two hours, seven minutes and 46 seconds, in ideal race conditions with temperatures around 10°C. Tune completed the race in two hours, 25 minutes and 25 seconds.