Full field returns for Boston Marathon coming-out party

Boston, April 20 (US): Fans dress up as unicorns. Bands playing music. Children jumping on a trampoline.

And the highest weasley screaming tunnel anyone can remember.

The Boston Marathon is fully fielded and back in the spring for the first time since 2019, and fans along the track staged an upcoming party for an area recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic, the AP reports.

“We were so happy we were able to do it,” Boston Athletic Association president Tom Grealke said Tuesday, the day after Evans Chebett and Olympic champion Pierce Jepschershire broke the bar on Boylston Street. “Boston was at its best.”

After six months of being postponed, then canceled, and then postponed again, the world’s oldest and most famous 26.2-mile race is back in its traditional Patriot Day spot on the schedule — and the weather is back, too.

Dense crowds lined the path through the eight cities and towns from Hopkinton to Boston Bay.

One of the boys got a high five from 2017 winner Edna Kiplagat. Other children blasted bubbles and sat on their parents’ shoulders to get the best view. There was music, dancing and drums.

A man incited women leaders by stalking them with a giant beheading of Will Smith. Near the middle of the road at Wellesley College, students have maintained the tradition of the “screaming tunnel” that had been muted six months earlier by masks.

“It was loud there,” Manuela Sharr, who also won the smaller and socially distanced race in October, said on Tuesday. “It was a little higher and a little bigger. I needed this.”

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The weekend, which coincided with the opening of the Boston Red Sox home, also included the usual fun 5K run, high school and career miles, as they had before the pandemic.

But the most welcome spectacle was the field of full 28,000 runners, led by Chibet across the finish line and then a women’s back-and-forth duel on the last mile between Gubshirshire and Ethiopia’s Ababil Yeshane.

“Does everyone now think we’re back?” Race director Dave McGillivray said on Tuesday. “In October, we kind of came back, and now we’re really back. That performance was yesterday for the ages. It really was.”

BAA officials said Tuesday that 25,314 participants had crossed the starting line in Hopkinton and had finished 24,918 by the time the clocks turned off at 5:35 p.m., with a 98.4% finish rate.

There were 1,580 people who received medical assistance, 1,033 at the end and 547 in the course. Fifty-five were admitted to the emergency rooms of the district hospital.

McGillivray, who annually returns to the starting line and runs the track after the elite runners finish, finished the race in the dark – his 50th straight year. One of the eight sprinters in the first official women’s division in 1972, Valery Rogochsky, celebrated the 50th anniversary of her pioneering track and finished in 6:38:57.

Chris Nickick, the first athlete with Down syndrome to complete Iron Man, finished in 5:38:51. Athlete and defender Adrian Haslett, who was injured in the 2013 bombing, ended up at 5:18:41.

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Guinness world record holder Jocelyn Rivas finished the 112th marathon with a time of 4:40:47. Jacky Hunt-Broersma finished in 5:05:13, her 102nd marathon in 102 days.

Other notable finishes:

NASCAR driver Matt Kenseth (3:01:40); football player and contestant “Survivor” Ethan Zohn (5:02:44); “The Bachelor” star Matt James (3:49:38); “Bachelorette” contestant Zack Clark (3:43:46); NCAA football and soccer player Sarah Fuller (5:50:59); former NFL player Kristen Lilly (3:54:42); founder and activist, Native Women Running Verna Volker (5:49:47); Paralympic medalist Melissa Stockwell (3:58:36).






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