Meb Keflezighi Takes Fourth in Hot and Humid London Olympic Marathon

In hot and humid conditions, San Diego’s Mebrahtom Keflezighi took fourth Sunday in the London Olympic marathon with a time of 2 hours, 11 minutes, 6 seconds, and was the only American finisher.

USA Track and Field quoted him afterward:  “Coming here, I told my wife, ‘I have a feeling I’m going to finish fourth.’ Did I want to finish fourth? No. But at the world or Olympic Games, I’ll take it, especially considering that I did not make the Olympics [in 2008].

“In 2004, to be a silver medalist, I know how that feels, so I congratulate those people who finished first, second and third. Everybody works hard to accomplish such a thing and I am very proud of myself and our country to finish fourth. It’s not where you want to be sometimes, but fourth place at my last Olympics—I’ll take it anytime.”

U.S. teammates Ryan Hall and Abdi Abdirahman suffered injuries.

“It was my right hamstring,” Hall said after dropping out about 18 miles. “I don’t know if it is tendonitis or something up high in the connection. But it was nothing that was that serious in training.”

It was his first time ever to fail to finish a race, Hall said.

“Those last couple of miles I’m weighing in my head, ‘Do I sit out here and could I have run 26 miles and finish in 3 hours or something.’ But my stride was getting worse and worse… This wasn’t something I could work through.”

Said Abdirahman, like Hall an Arizona resident: “I felt like I was feeling good during the race. I was in good position and feeling really good. I thought I was going to make a move at 13 miles, but something happened. There was just this pop in my [right] knee, I don’t know what it is, but it just popped when we turned and I tried to run a couple more miles, but I just couldn’t take it anymore. It was just painful.”

Abdirahman said he ran 20 miles in practice a week and a half ago and “everything was going well for me, but unfortunately something popped and I don’t know what it is. It was the hardest thing for me to do, but at the same time I didn’t want to push it and limp in dead last. That’s not what I was here for. The best thing for me was to shut it down.”

Stephen Kiprotich of Uganda won his country’s first medal of the London Games and only its third track medal ever as he won gold in 2:08:01. Next came Kenyans Abel Kirui in 2:08:27 and Wilson Kipsang in 2:09:37.

See the complete results here.

Original story:

Mebrahtom Keflezighi, a 1994 San Diego High School graduate, will run the marathon starting at 3 a.m. Pacific time Sunday—hoping to help USA Track & Field achieve its audacious goal of 30 medals at the London Olympics.

As of Saturday night, Team USA had 29 medals in track and field.

NBCOlympics.com, via its LiveExtra service, will live-stream the race and archive highlights later for replay.

A two-time Olympian who ran the 10,000 meters in 2000 and won silver in the 26.2-mile run at the 2004 Athens Games, Meb (as he is known) is 37 but won the Houston Olympic Trials race in a personal record 2 hours, 9 minutes and 8 seconds.

Keflezighi (pronounced Ka-FLEZ-kee) told U-T San Diego that this is his last Olympics but not his last competitive marathon.

Bob Larsen, his longtime coach, was quoted by the U-T as saying:  “Can he hang with these guys and how much pressure they’ll put him under in the race? You’d say with most guys, no. But Meb is so tough mentally and physically, you can’t count him out entirely. It’s Meb.”

After American track and field athletes won 23 medals in Beijing, then USATF CEO Doug Logan established Project 30, with Nike financing, to hit the 30-medal mark in 2012.

As of Saturday night, U.S. track athletes had won 29 medals, including golds in the women’s 4x400 relay and the men’s 4x100 relay in which an American record was set.

Other Americans entered in the 105-runner marathon field are two-time Olympian Ryan Hall, 29, and four-time Olympian Abdi Abdirahman, 35.