WANJIRU REMAINS MAN TO BEAT IN LONDON
By David Monti
(c) 2010 Race Results Weekly, all rights reserved - used with permission
LONDON
(23-Apr) -- Samuel Wanjiru's record in the marathon is short, but
nearly impeccable: four victories in five starts, and every race faster
than two hours and seven minutes. He's already won three of the World
Marathon Majors (WMM) races at Chicago, London and the Olympic Games,
was the WMM overall champion for the 2008/2009 season, and has already
earned millions of dollars in appearance fees, prize money and
endorsements.
Speaking to reporters here today, Wanjiru
maintained his usual cheery bearing. He seemed unperturbed by his
extraordinary trip with other African athletes via private plane which
took them from Nairobi via Djibouti, Asmara, Luxor, Madrid and finally
to London, arriving yesterday afternoon. It's all part of the job.
"The
travel was very good," Wanjiru said in a press conference today. "They
did a good job to get from Kenya to here. They did a good job."
But
behind that nearly constant smile, Wanjiru hides a vicious streak which
is readily apparent in his racing. He has developed a punishing racing
style, using multiple hard surges to tire his opponents before
scampering away to victory. He did this most effectively when he set
his Olympic Marathon record in Beijing in 2008, and again here last
year when he encouraged the pacemakers to press the pace early and tire
his opponents. Mostly self-coached, Wanjiru has developed his own
workouts to perfect his surging technique.
"Sometimes I do it in training," he said. "I run for five kilometers and rest for four kilometers."
Instead
of training in one of the established Kenyan camps that his manager,
Federico Rosa, has set up in Eldoret, Kaptagat or Kapsait, Wanjiru
prefers to stay near his home in Nyahururu where he has a more informal
training group. Sometimes training with former world 10,000m champion
Charles Kamathi, Rosa said in an interview that Wanjiru developed
unusual self-discipline from his six years in Japan where he attended
high school in Sendai then moved to the Japanese corporate system with
the Toyota Kyushu team. He takes training advice from Rosa's chief
coach, Claudio Beardelli, but Wanjiru has developed his own training
plan and workouts.
"This is working very well," deadpanned Rosa.
For
Sunday's race, Wanjiru said that he wasn't particularly concerned about
the finish time, but that he expected the race to be fast, in the
2:04's, even though he rated the course as "very hard with a lot of
curves and slopes." (He noted that the Chicago course was much faster).
"Let
me say on Sunday, it's a tough race," he said. "Everyone wants to see
who will fight each other." He added: "I don't know about a world
record, but a course record is possible."
After losing to Martin
Lel in London in 2008 in a sprint finish, Wanjiru made sure the
designated pacemakers went out hard here last year. Kenyans Elijah
Keitany, Sammy Kosgei and John Kales split the first mile in 4:35 and
the first (downhill) 5 km in 14:06, a 1:58:59 marathon pace. The
halfway mark was hit in 1:01:35, forcing the exhausted pacers to slow
down. When the pace sagged, Wanjiru rested, then attacked again with a
4:37 19th mile, dropping everyone but fellow Olympic medallists Tsegaye
Kebede of Ethiopia and Jaouad Gharib of Morocco. More surges in the
final kilometers dropped Gharib first, then Kebede, giving Wanjiru the
victory in a personal best and course record 2:05:10.
Race
director Dave Bedford has stacked his field against Wanjiru (London is
never a set-up race for one athlete). In addition to Kebede (2:05:18
PB) and Gharib (2:05:27), there are also Kenyans Duncan Kibet
(2:04:27), Abel Kirui (2:05:04) and Emmanuel Mutai (2:06:15), and the
world half-marathon record-holder Zersenay Tadese, who dropped out here
last year in his marathon debut, weakened by an illness.
When
he's not training, Wanjiru revealed that he enjoys karaoke, a hobby he
learned in Japan. His favorite Japanese song is titled "Sakura," a
song which gets it's name from a particularly beautiful flowering
Japanese cherry tree.
When Wanjiru gets back to training after
this race, he appears to have Haile Gebrselassie's world marathon
record in mind. Then again, he might return to Chicago to defend his
title.
"I think after this one I will train for Berlin," he mused. "I'm not sure. Maybe Chicago."
ENDS