1st December 2003
Dear Friends,
Yesterday (Sunday 30th November) was the 3rd running of the Chennai Marathon and was a case of "so close yet so far" for our Academy athlete "Kenyan". (Sukhnandan Lal)
Despite leading the throughout the 42.2km event, Kenyan was overtaken in the last 50 metres to have the win taken from his grip in controversial circumstances finishing 3 seconds behind the winner 2hrs 28min 35 secs in 2nd place.
At the completion of the race, chaos became the order of the day as confusion and arguments over who completed the course correctly began, causing much bad feeling. By their own admission, it was the fault of the Race Organisers, though I am loathe to criticise Race Organisations, being a Race Organiser myself and knowing the difficulties and complexities involved in staging such an event.
The confusion centred on Kenyan as the lead car with the clock and officials apparently turned him around early at the designated turnaround point. How far early he is supposed to have turned I have not been able to ascertain as I don't think anyone is quite sure and the officials who made the call wouldn't say.
But then, unbeknown to everyone except some of the race officials, they made a decision to penalise the Kenyan by directing him on another lap around the outside of the stadium where the finish was. This added another 2 1/2 minutes approx. onto his run.
Upon Kenyan entering the outside of the Stadium there was nobody near him and as it had been a hot steamy day and he had gone out hard early and was now tiring, he continued along at his own pace. Then to our shock and horror just after Kenyan entered the main Stadium, we suddenly saw firstly one, and then a second runner sprinting into the Stadium and rapidly closing in on Kenyan.
Unfortunately Kenyan did not realise that he was being passed until the runner had come level with him and was traveling much faster and could not react in time to sprint.
In fact he was completely dazed as the runner passed him, thinking he had entered the outside of the stadium with a lead in excess of 2 1/2 minutes and a sprint finish was the furthest thing from his mind. Fortunately, only one of these runners managed to pass him.
So the arguments continued for a quite along time after the event which took the gloss of what had been a good run by Kenyan in quite humid conditions.
As for Kenyan's view on things, despite it costing nearly A$2500 (first place was about A$5000), he is still happy that he earned A$2500 for his second place which is quite a lot of money for him, but more importantly he feels within himself that he won and is satisfied despite the records showing that he finished second.
He will live to fight another day, despite learning the most valuable lesson in sport and in life "It's not over till it's over!!" As I said and pointed out to him, he has learnt a valuable lesson, one that was quite expensive, but I believe he will continue to develop and also believe that his best marathon is still in front of him.
As I was earlier in the month with the Academy's performance at the Asian Triathlon Championships, I am proud of not just how Kenyan and the athletes at the Academy have developed (and are still developing) as athletes, but how they are developing as young people.
It is a great satisfaction both professionally and personally to play a role in the development of these fine young people and as we prepare for our 2nd trip to Australia I hope you will have the opportunity to meet these young people when we are in Australia again.
See you all soon.
Safe training and good health.
Brett
Brett Mace National Triathlon Coach, India Ph: (91) 98410 99002 Email: macesports@bigpond.com Web: www.triathlonindia.com