African men dominant at Vancouver Marathon

VANCOUVER - African runners continued their domination of the Vancouver Marathon Sunday as Ethiopia's Gezahgn Eshetu took the main race ahead of 2011 winner Bernard Onsare, while Kenya's Kip Kangogo won the half marathon.

The victory for the 28-year-old Eshetu, who clocked a time of 2:21:25 over the city course, was the eighth consecutive year an African had won the race. Onsare, a Calgary-based Kenyan who also won the race in 2009, was 25 seconds off the pace at 2:22:15, while Ryan Day of Victoria, British Columbia, claimed the top Canadian title, a distant third at 2:29:22.

Ellie Greenwood, a transplanted Scot who lives in Vancouver, captured the women's race in 2:42:16, after overtaking three-time winner Mary Akor of the USA (2:46:01) with seven kilometers to go and pouring it on to the finish line.

Eshetu claimed his first win in only his second marathon when he broke free from Onsare in the final kilometer and sprinted to the finish line to claim the 3,000 Canadian dollars winner's purse.

"The run is not fast, it's good. It's very cold," said the Addis Ababa native in his limited English of the nine degrees Celsius weather.

"He never had this experience of the coldness (before),"  explained Onsare, who has lived in Canada for the past five years. "So he's really excited for the win. I'm really excited for him winning here, it his first time to come over here."

Onsare, who was two minutes and 21 seconds off his 2011 winning time, said he knew of Eshetu before the race but the two had never ran together previously.

"I don't win every time so I was expecting anything can happen in a marathon. Like he just won, he just left me in the last kilometers so I'm not disappointed or discouraged so it' s a nice experience at the end of the day," he said.

"Since we didn't know each other we just stay behind, nobody wanted to make a move, so we could have made it (the race) faster. I guess next year, if he (Eshetu) comes back, he knows the course and he can have that much confidence so we can just maybe make it faster."

After winning marathons in Edmonton and Calgary in 2010, Greenwood added a Vancouver title to her achievements in a race where she barely looked tired crossing the finishing line.

"I' m more of an ultra-runner, which means this is a reasonably short race for me. I tend to do sort of 50 kilometers, 50 miles, that kind of thing," said the Dundee native who has recently moved back to Vancouver after living in Alberta. "The only trouble with this is particularly towards the end, it's pushing a fast pace for what I'm used to. But it was perfect running weather so that helps you feel good at the end."

Kangogo turned it on down the stretch to take the half marathon in a time 1:04:48, 19 seconds ahead of compatriot Willy Kiptoo Kimosop.

"By 18 kilometers, Willy was trying to shake things out and I say,  'You know what? I'm going to inject some speed too,' and see who's going to take it home. So after that I just came home."

Vancouver native Natasha Wodak-Fraser won the women's half marathon in 1:15:12, just ahead of American Allison Macsas.