Bahrain’s Eunice Kirwa clinched historic medal

Manama : Bahrain’s Eunice Kirwa clinched a historic silver medal for the Kingdom in the Women’s Marathon at the Rio Olympics yesterday.

Kirwa completed the course in two hours 24 minutes and 13 seconds, which is nine seconds adrift of Kenya’s gold-medal winner Jemima Sumgong (2:24.04). The bronze went to the defending World Champion Mare Dibaba (2:24:30) of Ethiopia.

Kirwa was in the leading pack of around a dozen runners including compatriot Rose Chelimo (2:27.36) who eventually finished eighth overall out of 157 runners. Bahrain’s other representative Shitaye Eshete did not finish.

After reaching 30km, seven athletes including Kirwa and Chelimo, were battling it out for the podium places. Others in the pack were Dibaba and Tirfi Tsegaye (Ethiopia), Sumgong (Kenya), Volha Mazuronak (Belarus) and Shalane Flanagan (US).

Around the 36km mark, Kirwa stepped up her pace, while Chelimo, Mazuronak, Tsegaye, and Flanagan fell off the pace leaving just the three eventual medallists.

With about 3km left, Kirwa appeared to be fading, but found some extra strength  and was soon overtaking Dibaba as she and Sumgong headed to the finishing point.

With less than a kilometre to go, Sumgong sensing victory found herself increasing her lead over Kirwa and crossed the finishing line by nine seconds. Sumgong’s victory resulted in a historic first-ever women’s Olympic gold medal for Kenya.