By Alison Wildey
LONDON, April 18 (Reuters) – Champion Emmanuel Mutai does
not expect a tactical race at this year’s London Marathon even
though he is among six Kenyans hoping to impress the national
selectors ahead of the Olympics.
Mutai heads a top-class field for Sunday’s race which
includes his compatriots world champion Abel Kirui, three-times
London winner Martin Lel and world record holder Patrick Makau.
London is the final chance to win a place on the Kenyan
Olympic marathon team with the selectors announcing their final
three at the end of the month.
“You cannot say we’ll be watching each other. You have to
run your own race because you use your own knowledge to say ‘how
am I going to do the race’, Mutai told Reuters on Wednesday.
Mutai, who set a course record of two hours four minutes and
40 seconds for victory last year and has never finished lower
than fourth in London, believes his previous experience of the
race could be a help.
“For me it’s an advantage but what matters is how the body
will respond on that day,” said the 27-year-old, who suffered a
bout of typhoid last month and missed some training.
“I cannot say I want to run this time… the most important
thing is that when the race starts and you’ve reached halfway
you can feel then what time you might do.”
Abel Kirui, who retained his world title in Daegu last year,
was confident his compatriots would all be concentrating on
their own race rather than each other.
“They’ll be some nervousness and tension but then I hope
everybody can run to his limits,” said the 29-year-old.
“Everybody shall run his own race and at the end we shall
run the best time and we shall run without any fear (of the
others).
“This is almost the same as the Olympics because these are
the representatives of the world… and the top class of
athletes,” added Kirui, whose first full marathon was as a
pacemaker for Ethiopian Haile Gebrselassie in Berlin in 2006.
Kirui was reluctant to predict a winner, with an intake of
breath and a big smile he said: “It’s unpredictable. Only God
knows.”
Ethiopian Tsegaye Kebede is the only non-Kenyan to have won
the men’s title in the last eight years and the 2010 winner
leads this year’s challenge to them.
(Editing by Pritha Sarkar)
