Just meters away from winning the 10K, defending champion Senbere Teferi followed a motorcycle off course, costing her the win and thousands of dollars in prize money.
yesterday. Instead, she took a wrong turn and had to double back, losing time, and dropping to third place, finishing the 10K in 30:47, four full seconds behind the winner, Ethiopia’s Fotyen Tesfay . The navigational error cost Teferi the $10,000 prize money awarded to the race’s champion. She walked away with $3,000., race director Rich Kenah explained what went wrong in those crucial moments.
“A momentary lapse, as I look at the video, in judgment, if you will,” Kenah said. “When you’re in that kind of battle,” he continued, “competitively, I think your instincts just take over and she took that right hand turn, and she came off course, and she just didn’t have enough time to recover to come back to first place.”how she’d been determined to stick with Teferi during the final stretch, but adjusted her kick strategy when she noticed her compatriot’s error.
“I saw the finish line,” the 25-year-old told CNN. “At first, I thought they didn’t really show us that well yesterday where the finish was, but after I saw that car turn, I saw the finish sign in front of me, so I pushed ahead. But I was really upset because I really planned to stick with Senbere at the finish.”
Before she veered off course, Teferi had a 10-second lead on the competition, and was poised for another victory, on the heels of her win at the women’s onlylast month. Tesfay was part of a four-woman lead pack which ran the first 5K in 14:59. Along with Teferi and the second place finisher, Jesca Chelangat of Kenya, another Kenyan, Dorcas Tuitoek was temporarily with the leaders.
The men’s race had a dramatic finish, too, with the top three men all finishing with the same time of 27:43; the first time that’s happened in the race’s 53-year history. Champion Charles Langat won by a mere stride, with last year’s winner Gabriel Geay and Nibret Melak right on his heels.Abby Carney is a writer and journalist in New York.
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