Tirfi Tsegaye win Tokyo marathons

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Dickson Chumba won the men’s race at the Tokyo Marathon on Sunday in a meet record time as Kenyan and Ethiopian runners dominated.
The 27-year-old Kenyan with a time of two hours, five minutes and 42 seconds was followed home by Tadese Tola of Ethiopia in 2:05:57 and fellow countryman Sammy Kitwara in 2:06:30.

Chumba broke his own personal best time of 2:05:46 he clocked in winning the Eindhoven Marathon in 2012. Runners from the two African countries swept the top seven spots in the men’s race and the top five in the women’s.

Ethiopia’s Tirfi Tsegaye won the women’s race in a meet record of 2:22:23. Fellow Ethiopian Berhane Dibaba finished second in 2:22:30 and Lucy Kabuu of Kenya third in 2:24:16.

Tsegaye, 29, made her marathon debut in 2008 when she won the Porto Marathon. She took out the Paris Marathon in 2012 and the Dubai event last year. She set her personal best of 2:21:19 when she finished second in 2012 in Berlin.

Under cloudy skies, about 36,000 runners took part in the eighth staging of the Tokyo event which was upgraded last year to one of the world’s major marathons, with the others comprising Boston, London, Berlin, Chicago and New York.