Mutai wins a scorching Glitnir Copenhagen Marathon 2007
Copenhagen 2007 – UK based Kenyan athlete, Julius Mutai, had little trouble in capturing Denmark’s number one marathon under blue skies and in sweltering conditions in a time of 2hrs 23mins 56secs.
The athlete with a 61:58 personal best over the half marathon distance brought class to a field which provided him scant competition until just before the half marathon mark. The performance of the 2nd and 3rd place finishers was impressive with the Danes Torben Juul Nielsen in 2:27:09 and Peder Troldborg 2:28:16, 2nd and 3rd respectively. A good result for two athletes over the age of 40, made more remarkable by the heat which was certainly not conducive to fast running at the top level.
The top 3 athletes were still bunched together approaching 16km however by 21km, passed by Mutai in 71:33, the gap had stretched to 22 seconds and by the finish his winning margin had been increased to 3:15.
The Women’s race was convincingly won by Denmark’s Anne-Sofie Pade Hansen in 2hrs 47mins 56secs. Hansen who runs for host club Sparta made her intention evident when she jumped out at the start and quickly put distance between herself and her competitors opening up a lead of almost 2 minute by 16km as she set-off on 2hr 45min pace. Nina W. Madsen gave pursuit and almost paid for this dearly over the last 5km of the race where she only just managed to hold of Britain’s Claire Peacock of the Stragglers club in the UK.
Hansen went through the halfway mark in 1:23:10 with Madsen closing to within 1 minute 13 seconds for a her halfway split of 1:24:23. The Sparta athlete had intentionally reduced her pace due to the conditions and had a 2nd 21km split of 1:24:46 to set-up a trouble free win.
Madsen on the other hand gamely hung on to her 2nd place after running the 2nd half in 1:33:27 (finish time 2:57:50), a brutal experience in the conditions and had the race been 500m longer we doubt she would have held off Peacock, who is not known as a warm weather runner, but had run 2min 05 seconds faster than the 2nd placed athlete over the 2nd half to close to within 48 seconds at the finish. (Peacock’s finish time 2:58:38)
Fine performances by the Top 3 men and women when the conditions are taken into consideration, with Hansen’s performance standing out.
Copenhagen Marathon 2007
Copenhagen Marathon contestants early in the race
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