By Gina Gomez
Oct. 12, (THAINDIAN NEWS) The 10 year old record that had been held by Khalid Khannouchi [set up in 1999] at the Bank of America Chicago Marathon, was finally broken this year by a young, spirited Kenyan. Samuel Wanjiru came crashing on to the finish line with great speed, to shatter the previously held record by Khalid by as little as a second. On Sunday, Wanjiru finished came in at 2 hours, 5 minutes and 41 seconds.

A bonus reward of an overwhelming amount of $100,000 was therefore waiting in the line for him, for overcoming the previous record. For the Olympic Marathon Champion, Sunday’s marathon looked to be an easy victory. The setting up of the new record [to be bettered in the future events] is also what is going to mark the Chicago Marathon for some more days to come in the future. This run also proved to be one of his personal bests in the US. Post win, Wanjiru was found commenting, “I was very happy to see I was the winner. It is unbelievable to take $100,000 for one second.”

Besides the $100,000 bonus, he also took home $75,000. He had completed his run almost 23 seconds ahead of Abderrahim Goumri (Morocco), who came in at 2:06:04. Vincent Kipruto from Kenya came in at 2:06:08, to round up the top 3 list.

In the women’s marathon, it was Liliya Shobukhova from Russia, who had clinched the title. She was followed in second by Irina Mikitenko of Germany, who is also the winner of the London Marathon this year. Russian Lidya Grigoryeva came in third.

As many as 45,000 runners had participated in the major annual event of the marathon [ranked as one of the top 5 in world marathons] that was held on Sunday.