quasify

A day after my friends & I volunteered for the Boston Marathon, I’ve been googling around trying to find some information on what happened to last year’s women’s champion, Caroline Kilel. Someone at work mentioned she collided with a water volunteer (the job my team had at kilometer 35) which if true is very disheartening.

All Africa has minimal detail.

Kilel tangled with a water volunteer in the closing stages knocking her out of the stride as Cherop, Chelagat who won the Masai Mara Marathon last year, Rono and Dado went in the clear.

The Boston Globe live blog makes me wonder – an official volunteer would not have tried to hand an elite runner anything (they are required to pick up their fluids from a fixed location on a special table).

11:23 a.m.: A volunteer walked out onto the course to hand water to the women’s leaders and collided briefly with the women. Nobody fell down, but the incident slowed leader Caroline Kilel.

And this, from Runner’s Web, is the closest I could find to an eye-witness sounding description of what happened.

Past 30 kilometers (1:48:48), disaster struck for Kilel. A young women –who may not have been an official volunteer because she was not wearing the organizer’s uniform– stepped into the lead pack to hand out cups of water, and collided with Kilel. Stunned, she fell back, worked to catch up, but would eventually drop out.

Regardless of who was to blame, an upsetting & unfortunate turn of events.