Thomas Ayeko opened up his road account by beating Ethiopian Tariku Bekele to the half marathon event of the IAAF BUPA Great Birmingham run on Sunday.
The 21-year old Ugandan, who was among Uganda’s best performers in the 10000m at the IAAF World Athletics Championships in Moscow two months back, showed little respect to the more experienced field, as he broke away from them with about 3km left to win in a time of 1 hour 2 minutes and 33 seconds.
He is the only runner that ran under 63 minutes in the event.
Tariku wanted to make it a threesome for the Ethiopians in the race, after Haile Gebreselassie and elder brother Kenenisa Bekele had won the event earlier, but the opposition from a number of selected runners in the IAAF Silver label race saw him finish a distant fifth.
Tariku, a 2008 World Indoor Championships 3000m winner and London 2012 Olympic Games 10,000m bronze medallist, had been dubbed as favourite with USA’s Abdi Abdirahman, Australian Collis Birmingham and European Athletics Championships 10,000m silver medallist Chris Thompson, the only challengers.
However, Ayeko, who won the prestigious IAAF Cross Country Permit meeting in Antrim early this year, had different ideas as he cruised to his first road race victory.
Birmingham Half Marathon
1. Thomas Ayeko (UGA) 1:02.33
2. Chris Thompson (UK) 1:03.04
3. Abraham Abdirahman (USA) 1:03:09
4. Collins Birmingham (AUS) 1:03:45
5. Tariku Bekele (ETH) 1:04:35
By Norman Katende, The New Vision