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Lead Stories: Friday, November 21, 2008

Chicago Marathon ‘07:
By the Numbers . . .

Posted October 7th, 2007 at 7:50 PM by Jimmie R. Markham

Section: News & Results, Marathons

Today’s LaSalle Bank Chicago Marathon was both a thrilling and tragic event. Here’s a look at the 30th edition of the race by the numbers:

It was Chicago’s slowest men’s finish time in 12 years (1995 winner, Ritva Lemettinen (FIN) finished in 2:11:18), continuing a trend set by a majority of the year’s World Marathon Major events (Haile Gebrselassie’s world record of 2:04:26 in Berlin being the lone exception thus far in 2007). See the chart below to compare finish times over the last decade.

One runner tragically died during the race. Several news agencies have reported that the deceased was a 35 year old man named Chad Schieber of Midland, Michigan. He was pronounced dead, presumably from heat-related causes, shortly before 1 p.m. at a Veteran’s Affairs hospital, the Cook County medical examiner’s office. An autopsy was scheduled for Monday.

250 people were taken to the hospital for heat-related ailments.

Almost 10,000 of the 45,000 registrants did not start the race because of the heat.

At 88°F, it was the hottest (and most humid) Chicago Marathon in history. The previous race-day high was 84°F in 1979.

Less than 0.05 seconds separated men’s winner Patrick Ivuti from runner-up Jaouad Gharib. It was the closest finish in the Chicago Marathon’s 30 year history.

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