Country Music Marathon Leaders Passing Through the North End

I showed up at the marathon race course this morning about 7:45 and was able to get some photos of the leaders of the pack passing through the North End. While I missed the men's leaders heading out of Downtown and up Rosa Parks, I did catch them on the leg down Rosa Parks from MetroCenter to Bicentennial Mall.

Leaders of the field on the North End leg are Ketema Nigusse (14), Sylvester Chebii (17), Meshack Kosgei (1220), and Christopher Torotich (7). All are Africans, except for Kosgei, who is a resident of Marietta, Georgia.

According to the Country Music Marathon website, their order of finish was Kosgei (2:14:54), Torotich (2:15:17), Chebii (2:16:05), Nigusse (2:17:54). However, the Tennessean is reporting that the Marathon on the men's side was won by Kenyan Amos Matui with in unofficial time of 2:14:25. The marathon website shows no split or finish times for Matui, so I don't know if the Tennessean is wrong or I'm just not reading the live updates correctly.

The women's leaders (bib numbers F7 and F10) headed up Rosa Parks toward MetroCenter. I was not able to match the bib numbers with names on the Country Music Marathon live updates, but both the Tennessean and the website are reporting that Russian Svetlana Pomoarenko won the women's race with a time of 2:32:14.

UPDATE: The Tennessean originally ran an article reporting that Amos Matui won the race (click on inset screen shot to enlarge) next to their photo of Sylvester Chebii (the runner in red and blue in my photos above) breaking the finish line tape. Doh! The Tennessean just corrected their online article to report that Chebii did in fact win the marathon.


UPDATE: Now to my reading of the marathon website's live updates. The order of finish does not seem to sync with the finishing times listed on the website (click on inset screenshot to enlarge). The Tennessean's photo makes it obvious that Chebii won the marathon, but the live updates on the marathon website don't seem to be reporting his correct time. Am I misreading something? Are the live update times unofficial times?


UPDATE: LiveResults Board now has the corrected finished times up.


UPDATE: More of my 2008 County Music Marathon pictures here.