Ethiopian runner wins Boston Marathon
BOSTON, MA -- The Latest on Monday's 120th running of the Boston Marathon (all times local):
3:20 p.m.
Boston Marathon bombing survivor Patrick Downes has finished the race on the prosthetic blade he has needed since losing his left leg in the 2013 attacks.
Downes completed the course in 5 hours, 56 minutes, 46 seconds. He reached the finish line minutes before 2:49 p.m., when the explosions on Boylston Street three years ago killed three people and wounded hundreds more.
Adrianne Haslet was still on the course at the time. The professional ballroom dancer also lost a leg in the attacks and was returning to the course as a runner. She completed the first half of the race in 4:47:17.
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2:40 p.m.
Top American finisher Zachary Hine made a quick stop at the post-race news conference before finishing up some family business.
Hine, a Massachusetts native who lives in Dallas, wanted to head back to the course to congratulate his sister. Melissa Hine also ran the race and set a personal best.
Zachary Hine finished 10th in 2 hours, 21 minutes, 37 seconds. He says he's struggled in recent marathons and expected to have a similar problem in Boston.
In his words, "I was hanging on for dear life there."
An Ivy League champion in the 5,000- and 10,000-meter runs when he went to Cornell, Hine finished 16th in the 2011 Boston Marathon in 2:16:54. In the 2012 Olympic trials, he came in 31st at 2:16:40.
It was a good day all around for the South Hadley native and his family. Melissa finished in 3:18:28.
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12:20 p.m.
Lemi Berhanu Hayle of Ethiopia has won the Boston Marathon in an unofficial time of 2 hours, 12 minutes, 45 seconds.
The 21-year-old pulled away from defending champion Lelisa Desisa as they crossed the Mass Pike heading into Kenmore Square. He won by 47 seconds.
The victory completed Ethiopia's first-ever sweep of the men's and women's races in Boston.
It was Hayle's first major marathon victory. He has run four smaller marathons since 2014, winning three and finishing second in Dubai in January.
Desisa finished 47 seconds back, in second place, and Ethiopian Yemane Adhane Tsegay was third to complete a sweep of the podium.
Noon
Atsede Baysa of Ethiopia has won the women's race at the Boston Marathon.
The 29-year-old, two-time Chicago Marathon winner came from 37 seconds behind with less than five miles to go and passed fellow Ethiopian Tirfi Tsegaye with two miles left.
Baysa finished in an unofficial time of 2 hours, 29 minutes, 19 seconds.
Tsegaye was 44 seconds back.
Defending women's champion Carolina Rotich dropped out in the first five miles.
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11:55 a.m.
Police Commissioner William Evans was planning to run in the Boston Marathon but decided he needed to work instead.
Evans has run 49 marathons and he wanted to make Boston the 50th. But after the Brussels bombings, he knew that things weren't quite settled down enough for him to take the day off on Patriots' Day. He says, "Unfortunately, it's still a crazy world out there."
Evans was at the finish line on Monday morning checking things out. He says security will be just as tight as it has in the two years since the attacks on Boylston Street in 2013. This year, the course will have added measures in the form of more surveillance cameras and anti-drone technology.
Evans says he'll run his 50th marathon in Maine next month.
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11:05 a.m.
Tatyana McFadden has won the women's wheelchair race at the Boston Marathon.
It was her fourth victory in a row.
McFadden completed the 26.2-mile course from Hopkinton to Copley Square in an official time of 1 hour, 42 minutes, 16 seconds. That is 8:10 behind the record pace because of a headwind.
McFadden was born in Russia and adopted by an American woman as a small child.
The 26-year-old McFadden lives in Clarksville, Maryland.
She was wearing a singlet honoring Martin Richard, the 8-year-old boy killed in the 2013 finish line bombings.
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11 a.m.
Switzerland's Marcel Hug has won his second straight men's wheelchair title at the Boston Marathon.
Hug crossed the finish line in 1 hour, 24 minutes and 1 second, which was just 5:36 off the course and world record. The 30-year-old edged second place Ernst Van Dyk, of South Africa, and Australian Kurt Fearnley, who was third.
The top three finished within a second of each other. Hug overtook the 10-time champion Van Dyk in the final turn off Boylston Street and outsprinted Van Dyk and Fearnley to the line.
Hug's time was nearly five minutes faster than his 2015 win.
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10:15 a.m.
Five miles into the Boston Marathon, defending champion Caroline Rotich stopped running and moved to the side of the road.
No word yet on what might have afflicted the 31-year-old Kenyan.
Rotich also won the Prague Marathon in 2013 and Las Vegas in 2009 and ran a personal best of 2 hours, 23 minutes, 22 seconds in Chicago in 2012.
Last year, she won Boston by 4 seconds after outsprinting Ethiopia's Mare Dibaba on Boylston Street.
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10 a.m.
And they're off. The elite men and the first of four waves of runners have kicked off the 120th Boston Marathon.
Security is tight for Monday's race - the third since a pair of bombings killed three spectators and wounded more than 260 others at the finish line in 2013.
Topping the men's field are Ethiopia's Lelisa Desisa, who won in 2015 and 2013, and Kenyan Wesley Korir, the 2012 champion.
Weather could play a factor as the 26.2-mile race unfolds. By midmorning, it had already hit 63 degrees in Boston, though forecasters said a sea breeze later in the day could provide slightly cooler conditions for the 30,000 competitors.
Racers also were dealing with a headwind in the first few miles.
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9:35 a.m.
The elite women's race is underway at the 120th Boston Marathon, diminished by the absence of some top athletes resting up for the Rio Olympics.
Defending champion Caroline Rotich, of Kenya, leads the women's field. Tiki Gelana, the 2012 Olympics gold medalist, and fellow Ethiopian Buzunesh Deba also are in the hunt.
The top American is Neely Spence Gracey, of Spencer, Colorado, making her marathon debut Monday.
All three U.S. Olympic Team members are sitting out Boston. They include Desi Linden, who was fourth last year, and Shalane Flanagan, who was ninth.
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9:20 a.m.
The Boston Marathon just got a lot faster with the wheelchair division underway.
That division includes defending champions Marcel Hug, of Switzerland, and Tatyana McFadden, of the U.S.
Both are crowd favorites looking to repeat their 2015 victories.
Thirty men and 15 women got off quickly on the downhill start in Hopkinton, Massachusetts.
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9:10 a.m.
Two people who lost limbs in the 2013 bombings at the Boston Marathon finish line are running this year's race.
Adrianne Haslet and Patrick Downes both lost legs in the attacks. Both are on their way from Hopkinton to Boston as part of the mobility-impaired division in Monday's 120th running of the venerable marathon.
Haslet is a professional ballroom dancer running to raise money and awareness for Limbs for Life, a charity that provides expensive prostheses to low-income amputees.
Both are running on special carbon-fiber blades.
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8:55 a.m.
The Boston Marathon is officially underway with the mobility-impaired athletes setting off.
About 50 participants with visual impairments and other disabilities are in Monday's race. They're being guided by able-bodied runners accompanying them along the 26.2-mile course.
The more competitive push rim wheelchair division sets off at 9:17 a.m., and the elite women go off at 9:32 a.m.
The elite men and the first of four waves of runners follow at 10 a.m.
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8:30 a.m.
With the top American marathoners resting for the Rio Olympics, Neely Spence Gracey could be the best U.S. hope for a podium finish in Boston on Monday.
The 26-year-old from Superior, Colorado, is an eight-time NCAA Division II national champion who will be making her marathon debut.
But in a way, she has been a marathoner all her life.
Gracey is the daughter of 1991 world championship bronze medalist Steve Spence. Her father finished 19th - the No. 2 American overall - in the 1989 Boston Marathon, and Gracey was born on Patriots' Day in 1990 while her father was running the race.
