Sifan Hassan Wins London Marathon in Stunning Comeback

Sifan Hassan, an Olympic track champion from the Netherlands running her first marathon, staged a stunning comeback on Sunday to win the London Marathon in one of the most dramatic and unexpected finishes in the race’s history.

In winning, Hassan showed both her stunning range as a runner — she was a triple medalist in three shorter distances on the Tokyo Olympics track two years ago and holds the world record in the mile — but also her inexperience as a marathoner.

An Ethiopian-born Dutch athlete better known for her middle-distance success, Hassan fell off the pace about an hour into the race after stopping to stretch her aching left hip, dropped behind the lead group at times and pushed it at others, and even offered drinks to her rivals as they ran.

And Hassan, 30, did it all despite training for the race during Ramadan, a month of fasting that left her unable to complete long runs because she could not drink or eat during the day.

Yet at the finish line on Sunday, she wound up on her knees a few yards beyond the tape she had just broken, draped in a pink towel and appearing to talk herself through what she had just accomplished.

“I can’t believe it,” she said to no one in particular.

Her race was hardly a textbook marathon. She stopped about an hour in, clearly struggling, and dropped off the pace while she stretched her legs and hips. Soon, though, she was back on the hunt and closing the gap on the front-running group that included experienced marathoners like the Olympic gold medalist Peres Jepchirchir of Kenya and the defending London Marathon champion Yalemzerf Yehualaw of Ethiopia.

Creeping closer and closer to the front as the finish neared, Hassan eventually pulled within sight of the leaders, then onto their shoulders and then, as she rounded the final corner and a large grandstand filled with spectators gave a roar, she took off as if she were closing out a 1,500-meter race.

Her final two challengers, Alemu Megertu of Ethiopia and Jepchirchir, had nothing left to match her. And just like that, Hassan, in her debut race, was a marathon champion. Crossing the line, she covered her face in her hands in disbelief.

Hassan finished in 2 hours 18 minutes 34 seconds, finishing with a track star’s sprint over the rainy streets of Westminster that carried her across the finish line just in front of Buckingham Palace. Megertu was second, Jepchirchir third and Yehualaw fourth.

Hassan is no stranger to victories, or to demanding running propositions. She won gold medals at the Tokyo Olympics at 5,000 and 10,000 meters, and a bronze in the 1,500, six hard races in nine days after which she had admitted she questioned if she was “crazy.”

That experience was, perhaps, still in the back of Hassan’s mind when she woke up one morning and decided to run London.

In an interview before the race, she admitted that she had entered the race on a whim, and that training during Ramadan had kept her from optimizing her training. “Sometimes I wake up like, ‘Why the hell did I decide to run a marathon?’” she had said last week.

She had acknowledged then that not only did she not expect to win, she wasn’t even sure she would finish. “I’m already having nerves, almost for one month,” she said. “And I’m just so scared of a marathon.”

Her goal, mostly, had been to learn from her London experience so that she might benefit from it if she ever tried the distance again. The most important thing, she said, was finishing the race, “so the next time I know what to do.”

The next time, whenever that comes, she will cross the starting line as a major marathon champion.