When Ethiopian Lelisa Desisa returns to the starting line of the Boston Marathon tomorrow after winning the fabled footrace last year, one of his fiercest challengers may be Kenyan Dennis Kimetto.
Both men arrive in Boston with short but enviable records, with this marking only the fourth marathon for each and the first time they will meet in a race. Each won two of their last three outings and came in second in the third one.
This year’s 118th running of the race is sure to be an emotional one with the largest ever field of 36,000 including many racers who were not able to cross the finish line last year when police stopped the race after two bombs exploded, killing three and injuring more than 260.
With his win all but forgotten in the face of the attack, Desisa returned to Boston last summer to donate his first place medal to the city. He gave his racing bib to a victim, a ballroom dancer who lost her leg in the attack.
Known as a tactical racer with an ability to sprint at the end, he outraced two rivals on Boylston Street to win the 2013 race in two hours 10 minutes and 22 seconds.
Hours later two homemade pressure cooker bombs, packed with nails, tore through the crowd at the finish line.
The world championship silver medallist, Desisa holds a personal best of 2:04:45 set in Dubai in 2013.
Saying he is happy to be back one year after the destruction eclipsed his celebrations, the Ethiopian said: “We have to look to the future. There has to be resilience.”
For himself, he hopes that will mean a repeat of last year’s success.
“I am ready to win again. I did much training.”
Only Kimetto boasts a faster personal best among the Boston runners, having won in Chicago in 2:03:45 last year.
Kimetto is known to excel at flat, fast courses, the very opposite of Boston’s gruelling hills.
Kimetto and Desisa will compete in a tough field, where seven of the 22 elite men runners have finished a 26.2 mile marathon course in under 2:05:30, making it the fastest group ever to race in Boston, organisers said.
The men and women’s winners will each receive $150,000 in prize money out of the Boston race’s total $806,000 purse.