{"id":8426,"date":"2023-04-23T22:00:26","date_gmt":"2023-04-23T22:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/london-marathon-sifan-hassan-overcomes-injury-to-claim-rollercoaster-victory-in-debut-marathon\/"},"modified":"2023-04-23T22:00:27","modified_gmt":"2023-04-23T22:00:27","slug":"london-marathon-sifan-hassan-overcomes-injury-to-claim-rollercoaster-victory-in-debut-marathon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/london-marathon-sifan-hassan-overcomes-injury-to-claim-rollercoaster-victory-in-debut-marathon\/","title":{"rendered":"London Marathon: Sifan Hassan overcomes injury to claim rollercoaster victory in debut marathon"},"content":{"rendered":"


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It has been dubbed one of the greatest victories of all time – it was also one of the most dramatic.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Sifan Hassan, a two-time Olympic champion on the track but someone who had never raced a marathon, winning in London against a fearsome field of champions, each experts over 26.2 miles.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

That would be remarkable enough but early on Hassan looked like she was going to have to drop out.<\/span><\/p>\n

She was limping, struggling with a hip injury and at one stage pulled to the side of the road to stretch out the issue as her rivals disappeared up the road.<\/span><\/p>\n

“She needs to stop,” Britain’s marathon world champion Paula Radcliffe said on BBC TV.<\/span><\/p>\n

“Somebody needs to give her some advice to step off and stop trying to run on.”<\/span><\/p>\n

But Hassan, a former refugee who left Ethiopia for the Netherlands as a 15-year-old, did not stop. <\/span><\/p>\n

She continued, reeled in the Olympic marathon champion and last year’s winner in London before sprinting for glory on The Mall.<\/span><\/p>\n

“To outkick them is remarkable,” Radcliffe said.<\/span><\/p>\n

“It’s not just winning it, it’s the way she was out of contention and yet she fought back to beat the Olympic champion, the defending champion.<\/span><\/p>\n

“She is an inspiration and that is just phenomenal.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Before the race the 30-year-old was not talking like someone confident of winning a marathon. <\/span><\/p>\n

She admitted she was “scared” of competing over the distance. She said she cried at the prospect on the morning of the race.<\/span><\/p>\n

“Sometimes I wake up and it is like ‘why the hell did I decide to run a marathon?’ But also, at the same time, I am very curious [about how I will perform],” she said in the pre-race news conference.<\/span><\/p>\n

Hassan’s build-up was also impacted by the holy month of Ramadan which, as with others who follow the religion of Islam, meant abstaining from eating or drinking during daylight hours.<\/span><\/p>\n

That is not ideal preparation for a marathon.<\/span><\/p>\n

Asked how she changed her plans from those that saw her win <\/span>5,000 and 10,000m gold at the Tokyo<\/span><\/a>, she said: “I have not really changed the way I train.<\/span><\/p>\n

“I just added a little bit the endurance because also I am fasting. I didn’t add that much.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Even in the closing stages there was more drama for Hassan.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/span>
Hassan won in a time of two hours 18 minutes 33 seconds<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

She almost missed collecting a drink from the drinks station, something track runners do not even have to think about.<\/span><\/p>\n

But Hassan veered across the road after realising her mistake, collected a her bottle and even recovered to offer 2022 London Marathon winner Yalemzerf Yehualaw a swig. That said, she still almost collided with a support motorbike.<\/span><\/p>\n

“I’m born to have drama,” she joked.<\/span><\/p>\n

“I didn’t practise getting a drink. I saw the other athletes go and I thought ‘where are they going?’. So I grabbed a drink.”<\/span><\/p>\n

After completing the win, Hassan’s bubbly personality came pouring out in an interview with the BBC’s Gabby Logan. It was almost as entertaining as her run.<\/span><\/p>\n

“It was just amazing. I never thought I would finish a marathon and here I am winning it,” she said.<\/span><\/p>\n

At one stage she had her head in her hands, clearly still unable to fully comprehend what she had done.<\/span><\/p>\n

“My leg was bothering me,” Hassan added.<\/span><\/p>\n

“I had a hip problem a week ago. I forgot to tape it this morning. I stopped and stretched, and they got away, but I started to feel good after 10km.”<\/span><\/p>\n

In the end, the more than two-hour race came down to a sprint in the final few metres. <\/span><\/p>\n

First Yehualaw was dropped, leaving Hassan in a three-way fight with Olympic champion Peres Jepchirchir and Ethiopia’s Alemu Megertu – the runner-up last year.<\/span><\/p>\n

Given Hassan had now run four times as far as her normal distance, you would think she would be tired. Not a chance…<\/span><\/p>\n

“At 20km I knew that I could kick on because I didn’t feel that tired and I didn’t care how I finished, I just wanted to get there,” she said.<\/span><\/p>\n

“They said the marathon would hurt but I felt really good, even after 5km and 15km! When I saw the finish line, I thought, is that really it?”<\/span><\/p>\n

Commentators were stunned as she crossed the finish line, arms outstretched.<\/span><\/p>\n

“Sifan Hassan has done something that nobody could ever have expected,” Steve Cram said. “She was struggling, she was grabbing her hip, stopping to stretch it off.<\/span><\/p>\n

“She can hardly believe it, this might just be the best success of her life.”<\/span><\/p>\n

The BBC’s Andrew Cotter added: “She just defies convention. She hasn’t run that in a normal way and that’s why it is the greatest marathon win that I have seen, because of the way she did it.<\/span><\/p>\n

“Two World Championship golds and two Olympic golds on the track, but that is the best win of her life.”<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Watch<\/span><\/span>\"Watch<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n


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It has been dubbed one of the greatest victories of all time – it was also one of the most dramatic. Sifan Hassan, a two-time Olympic champion on the track but someone who had never raced a marathon, winning in London against a fearsome field of champions, each experts over 26.2 miles. That would be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8427,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[15],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8426"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8426"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8426\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8428,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8426\/revisions\/8428"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}