Korir wins second straight Boston marathon title in course record time

John Korir, of Kenya, breaks the tape to win the Boston Marathon in Boston. (AP)

BOSTON, April 20 (AP): Defending champion John Korir broke the Boston marathon course record on Monday, riding a tailwind to outrun the fastest field in event history and win in an unofficial 2 hours, 1 minute, 52 seconds for his second straight victory.

The Kenyan broke away from the pack as it headed into Heartbreak Hill in Newton and opened a 40-second lead, peeking behind him as he went through Kenmore Square with a mile to go. He beat the 2:03:02 set by Geoffrey Mutai in 2011 by 1:10.

Kelvin Kiptum holds the marathon world record, with a 2:00:35 on the flatter Chicago course in 2023.

Marcel Hug of Switzerland won his ninth wheelchair title in 1:16:06, missing his own course record by 33 seconds. He is one shy of the all-category record of South African wheelchair athlete Ernst Van Dyk's 10 Boston marathon wins.

Two-time winner Daniel Romanchuk of Champaign, Illinois, was second behind Hug for the fourth straight time.

In the women's wheelchair race, Eden Rainbow-Cooper of Britain won her second Boston title, finishing in 1:30:51, beating runner-up Catherine Debrunner of Switzerland by more than two minutes.

The athletes arrived in Hopkinton with frost on the ground and temperatures in the 30s. It had warmed to 45 degrees (7 degrees Celsius) by the start, the coldest starting temperature since 2018, when it was 38 degrees combined with a headwind and driving rain that led to the slowest winning times in more than 40 years.

But the clear skies and slight tailwind on Monday had the fastest field in the 130-year history of the world’s oldest and most prestigious annual marathon, expecting fast times for the second year in a row.

Jack Fultz, who was serving as grand marshal on the 50th anniversary of his "Run for the Hoses,” said the weather was the "polar opposite” from the day of his 1976 win in temperatures approaching 100 degrees (38 degrees Celsius).

"I am just trying to soak it all in, to remember it all," he said before in Hopkinton on Monday. "There are almost no words to fully describe the kind of experience. You have a dream of a lifetime, and all of a sudden it comes true.”