China saw a new men's national record of 2:06:57 from Jie He at the Wuxi Marathon Sunday, but in Japan it was a relatively quiet weekend with mostly cold and rainy amateur-level marathons across the country. At the Tokushima Marathon , club runner Yuhi Yamashita won the men's race by almost 4 1/2 minutes in 2:17:02, the fastest Japanese men's time of the weekend, but oddly took 22 seconds to get across the starting line. The women's race saw a close finish between the top two, with Shiho Iwane winning in 2:49:33 over Ayaka Furukawa , 2nd in 2:49:46. At the 41st edition of the Sakura Marathon in Chiba, Yukie Matsumura (Comodi Iida) ran the fastest Japanese women's time of the weekend, 2:42:45, to take the win. Club runner Yuki Kuroda won the men's race in 2:20:08. Chika Yokota won the Saga Sakura Marathon women's race in 2:49:33. Yuki Yamada won the men's race in 2:21:47 after taking the lead in the final 2 km. Naoki Inoue won the 16th r
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For those who haven't read the interviews on this website from December 2011, they are well worth putting aside an hour or two to digest - I am not aware of any similar insight/background available through other sources.
And additionally, there's a sizeable memorial article on ESPN (read the article, ignore the video) at
http://espn.go.com/espn/otl/story/_/id/7928880/why-kenya-olympic-marathon-champion-sammy-wanjiru-live-see-25-story-shocking-talent-sudden-wealth-bitter-intrigue
RIP Sammy Wanjiru. We'll probably never know what really happened, and we'll certainly never know just how good he could have become.
They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery , right down to the Wikipedia attribution:
RIP Sammy