Berlin Marathon: Ethiopia’s Milkesa Mengesha & Tigist Ketema win males’s and ladies’s races

Ethiopia dominated Sunday’s Berlin marathon, with winners in each the lads’s and ladies’s races and runners in 5 of the six podium locations.

Milkesa Mengesha, 24, beat Kenya’s Cybrian Kotut by simply 5 seconds within the males’s occasion, pulling clear within the last stretch to complete in two hours, three minutes 17 seconds.

Fellow Ethiopian Haymanot Alew was third.

Tigist Ketema, 26, claimed victory within the girls’s occasion in a time of two hours 16 minutes 42 seconds, greater than two minutes forward of compatriots Mestawot Fikir and Bosena Mulatie.

Ethiopia’s Tigist Assefa broke the ladies’s world report with a time of two:11:53 in final yr’s race, however whereas Ketema was 5 minutes slower than that, her profitable time was nonetheless the third quickest within the occasion.

Nice Britain’s Calli Hauger-Thackery, 31, was the primary European dwelling in seventh place, ending lower than 5 minutes behind Ketema in 2:21:24 – the sixth-fastest marathon run of all time by a British girl, exterior.

David Weir, 45, was second within the males’s wheelchair race, ending one minute 47 seconds behind Switzerland’s Olympic champion Marcel Hug, who gained in a time of 1:27:18.

It was the fiftieth operating of the distinguished occasion however quite a lot of massive names have been lacking, with the races coming simply over a month after the top of the Paris Olympics.

Kenya’s five-time winner Eliud Kipchoge, who gained the 2022 males’s race in a then world report time of two:01:09, was amongst these not racing.