NEW YORK — Geoffrey Kamworor and Joyciline Jepkosgei gave Kenya a sweep of the New York City Marathon men’s and women’s titles on Sunday.
Kamworor won the world’s largest annual marathon for the second time in three years, pulling away from countryman Albert Korir in the final miles. Kamworor, who trains with marathon world-record holder Eliud Kipchoge, finished in 2:08:13 and then immediately embraced Kipchoge, who was in the Central Park crowd.
“I didn’t want to disappoint him,” said Kamworor, who calls the eight-years-older Kipchoge a mentor. “That gave me a lot of motivation. He inspired me a lot during the race.”
Jepkosgei, a half-marathon world-record holder like Kamworor, outdueled four-time NYC champion Mary Keitany. She clocked 2:22:38, the second-fastest female time in race history, to become the first woman to win New York City in her marathon debut since 1994. At 25, she is the youngest female winner since 2001.
Keitany, a 37-year-old bidding to become the oldest female NYC winner since 1987, finished second. She was 54 seconds behind Jepkosgei, who in the last year withdrew before scheduled marathon debuts in Honolulu (ankle) and Hamburg (chose to pace the London Marathon).
“I know Mary had more experience in the marathon, so I was trying to push,” Jepkosgei said.
Olympians Des Linden and Jared Ward were the top Americans, each in sixth place.
Ethiopian Lelisa Desisa, the defending men’s champion, withdrew in the seventh mile, 29 days after winning the world championships marathon in Doha. U.S. Olympic team contender Sara Hall dropped out at mile 18 with stomach issues, 35 days after lowering her personal best by four minutes at the Berlin Marathon.
MORE: 2019 NYC Marathon Results
New York City marked the end of the 2019 major marathon season. Top Americans are now focused on the Olympic Trials in Atlanta on Feb. 29, when the top three per gender are in line to make the Tokyo team.
Most of the U.S. Olympic favorites did not run New York City, it being less than four months before trials. That group includes Rio Olympic bronze medalist Galen Rupp, who withdrew during the Oct. 13 Chicago Marathon with a calf injury in his first race in a year after Achilles surgery.
Ward, a BYU statistics professor who was sixth in Rio, is one of three other U.S. men to break 2:10 in this Olympic cycle. He’s finished in the top 10 of major marathons each of the last three years. Four years ago, Ward deemed his chances of making the Olympic team at 35 percent. He feels they are better this time.
“I wanted something today that solidified the breakthrough that I had in Boston [in April, a personal-best 2:09:25] and establish to myself that I’m a different marathoner going into this Olympic trial cycle, in this Olympic cycle, than I was in the last one,” Ward said. “It was a validating performance.”
The U.S. women are deeper, even with the recent retirement of four-time Olympian Shalane Flanagan. Linden, the 2018 Boston Marathon winner, repeated in the months before New York that she is undecided on running trials in the final years of her career.
“Right now is not the time, just based on how many calves feel and my feet feel,” Linden said when asked about 2020 plans, about an hour after placing in the top eight of an 11th straight marathon since failing to finish at the 2012 London Olympics. “Maybe at 1 a.m. tonight, I’ll have different opinions.”
The U.S. also boasts Jordan Hasay (second-fastest American woman in history), 2017 World bronze medalist Amy Cragg and Molly Huddle, the American record holder at 10,000m.
Earlier Sunday, American Daniel Romanchuk and Swiss Manuela Schar repeated as NYC wheelchair champions.
Romanchuk, 21, followed up a breakthrough 2018 when he became the first U.S. man to win the wheelchair division as well as the youngest male NYC champion in history. Romanchuk won majors in Boston and London in the spring and Chicago and New York City in the fall.
Schar, 34, three-peated as NYC champion to become the first person to sweep all six major city marathons in one year since Tokyo was added to the group in 2017. American Tatyana McFadden, whom Schar supplanted as the dominant female racer, was second, 3:59 behind.
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MORE: 2019 Boston Marathon Results
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