Keflezighi triumph embodies the true strength of Boston

My love for the marathon has grown in the past couple of weeks.

Despite the fact I’m a sprinter who trains to run for about 12 seconds, there’s so much about the marathon I admire. Don’t worry, it is not enough to start running the massive mileage, just enough to be a big fan.

This year, the 118th Boston Marathon was a day marked by resilience and determination. The race took place 371 days after the bombing at the 2013 event. The atrocity left three people dead: Krystle Campbell, Lu Lingzi and Martin Richard. Many others suffered horrendous and life-altering injuries.

When the marathon was on last year, I was in Munich seeing a sports doctor. After my appointment, I checked the results on my computer and was left shocked by the events unfolding. I knew people who were there and thankfully they were all okay but many, many more were not so lucky.

The 2014 Boston Marathon had the motto ‘Boston Strong’, a theme about reclaiming the event from the atrocities of last year. There were more runners and spectators than ever before and the revenue from the event was the highest in the race’s history.

Despite taking place in the USA, the event has experienced a 31-year spell without an American winner before 2014. For that and many more reasons, American distance star Meb Keflezighi wasn’t a favourite to win the race. He had the 15th fastest time on paper going into the race and turns 39 next week. The logic was that he was too slow and too old to win. Added to that, he doesn’t even have the backing of a major running shoe company.

He ran all 26.2 miles in his Sketchers running shoes. Most of the top names cross the line in Nike or Adidas but Keflezighi has opted to develop a relationship with one of the far smaller players in the market.

On the other hand, his age, personal best and shoe sponsor tell little of his story.

Keflezighi (pronounced Kef Lez Gee) migrated to America with his family when he was 12 in 1987.

He came from Eritrea, growing up in the middle of a 30-year war of independence with Ethiopia.

When the Boston Marathon bombs exploded in 2013, Keflezighi wasn’t far from the scene. He was at the marathon as a spectator, not racing because of an injury. The bombing resonated deeply with him and reminded him of the horrors of his childhood in Eritrea. After this year’s race, he spoke of how he visualised the 2014 Boston race every single day since the bombings, wanting to get back to the race and do something positive.

One of the beauties of the Boston Marathon is that it’s run without pacemakers, meaning the pace is determined by the athletes and has not been planned before the start. This makes Boston quite a different race to other big marathons like London, Chicago and Berlin. Really fast times are usually less likely without a pacemaker; athletes are racing against each other, rather than the clock, and it becomes a far more tactical affair which can lead to intriguing battles between runners.

Last week, Keflezighi ran a brave race. He went to the front before 15km and created a nice lead. With only 12km to go, he was over a minute clear of the field. Statistics can be a dangerous thing to rely on in a race with an athlete like Keflezighi. He may have only been the 15th fastest on paper but he has an Olympic medal and has won the New York marathon. The guy has pedigree as a big-time performer yet the pack of runners allowed him to build such a big advantage.

The athletes chasing down Keflezighi had to rely on a combination of their increasing pace and his decreasing speed. In the end, the risk of leaving him go was far too great. He couldn’t be caught. On Boylston Street, the site of the bombings, he blessed himself a couple of times and had enough time to take in the scenes of celebration. For an American athlete to win this year was hugely significant.

Perhaps the chasing pack hadn’t considered how much the bombings resonated with Keflezighi. He wrote the names of each victim on his bib and revealed that he repeated the “Boston Strong” motto when the going got tough. As someone who has been called ‘a championship performer’, I know you can never discount passion, hunger and drive to win, even when the odds look stacked against you. The underdog is always dangerous.

The truly great athletes find their way through all the reasons to give up. Keflezighi’s fastest times may not be jaw-dropping but he achieves them at exactly the right moments, a major talent. When Nike didn’t re-sign him in 2011, he carved out a deal with non-traditional running brand, Sketchers. It was a risky move but has been really successful for both parties. His win in Boston was a huge coup for Sketchers, giving their performance shoes a serious credibility.

The 2014 Boston Marathon was an incredible event. Boston was strong and for the first time in 31 years, an American man took the title. That it was Meb Keflezighi seems purifying after the events of last year.