MUMBAI: And then there were three! By the 37-km mark, the elite men’s marathon field, which included defending champion Cosmas Lagat, had considerably thinned out. Ayele Abshero, Derara Hurisa and Birhanu Teshome, all three from Ethiopia, made up the lead group and had broken well away from the rest.
Coming into the 2020 Mumbai Marathon, Abshero was the fastest with a personal best of 2:04:23, and the 29-year-old guided his compatriots, goading them to stay on track to break the course record. But with a kilometre to go, Hurisa, the youngest of the lot at 22 and running his first full marathon, surprisingly peeled away from the group.
His acceleration in the last 1000 metres, in shoes he had borrowed from a friend, provided the Mumbai Marathon with one of its most stunning finishes.
Hurisa not only broke the course record, but with a timing of 2:08.09, he was 11 seconds faster than the second-placed Ayele. As it happened, all the three Ethiopians broke the previous course record of 2:08.35 set Gideon Kipketer in 2016. Teshome won the bronze as he clocked 2:08.26.
The fact that three of them shattered the four-year-old record and the top-seven finishers all ran under the 2:10 mark once again shifted the discussion to their neon shoes.
The majority of the field in the elite marathon wore the neon (lime green or pink) Nike Vaporfly shoes. A version of those shoes was worn by Eliud Kipchoge in Vienna when he became the first man to run a distance of 42.4 km under two hours in an unofficial run in October.
The Vaporfly has carbon fibre plates and air pockets in their thick soles that act like springs. Later in the month, the IAAF will take a decision on the legality on a range of shoes used in pro races and whether it amounts to ‘technological doping’.
While Hurisa’s finish left no doubt over his inherent talent, questions arose over his choice of shoes especially as he walked into the post-race press conference in Adidas gear. The 22-year-old Derara said he had lost his shoes during the flight to India and had borrowed one of his friends’ shoes, which happened to a Nike Vaporfly, for the race.