Qatar's Shami takes marathon, Yaseen gets silver in photofinish

By Peter Auf der Heyde Dec 10, 2006, 13:29 GMT

Doha, Qatar - Kenyan-born Hassan Mubarak Shami gave local fans plenty to cheer about on Sunday as he won the Asian Games marathon for Qatar in overwhelming fashion.

Shami overed the classic 42.195-kilometres distance in a time of 2:12.46 hours for a winning margin of almost three minutes.

Another Kenyan-born runner, Bahrain's Khalid Kamal Yaseen, who was formerly known as Peter Ndegwa, won the silver medal in a photo finish from Japan's Satoshi Osaki.

Both finished with a time of 2:15.36 hours and after organizers had at first placed both as second, Yaseen was later given the silver and Osaki the bronze.

The Japanese was philosophical about being placed third.

'A result is a result, I accept it. I did my best and I am satisfied with the result.

'Japan's female runners on Saturday won the silver and bronze in the marathon, so I wanted to achieve the same result and I am pleased that I managed that,' Osaki said.

For Shami, who was formerly known as Richard Yatich, the victory marks his biggest-ever success and it is also the first time that Qatar has won the marathon at Asia's showpiece sporting event.

He broke away from the rest of the field early on and then never looked back as he soon built up a gap of more than a minute.

'I broke away because everybody else in the race was running so slow. The chase pack today was much too slow, that makes the gold medal much easier to get.'

He said he had left Kenya because he did not have as many chances to run there.

'Everybody in Kenya is running, everyone wants gold. If I was in Kenya, maybe I would not be able to run for the country.'

His victory was hugely popular with the thousands of fans who lined the streets of Doha along the route that wound its way through the streets of the capital.

In 2005 he came agonizingly close to winning the world half marathon championships but on the finish line, seemingly assured of his victory, he raised his arms in celebration, only to allow Tanzanian Fabiano Joseph to pull past him.

This time around, there was no such danger as Osaki and Yaseen were too far behind and Shami also waited to cross the line before throwing his arms up and celebrating.