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DAVENPORT – Belay Tilahun does not speak much English.
He let his legs talk on Saturday morning.
The 23-year-old Ethiopian took off and left everyone far behind Kirkwood Boulevard and won an easy victory in the 44th annual Quad. – City Times Bix 7.
It was a race filled with historic milestones
Tilahun became the first Ethiopian to win the Bix 7, overcoming several failures in the past.
10,000 meter champion Ben Flanagan recorded the best performance of a Canadian crossing the line in second place.
Andrew Colley of Blowing Rock, NC, took fourth place. Bix since Meb Keflezighi was third in 2013. It's the highest birth American since Ken Martin won the race in 1991.
Colley was one of four Americans in the top 10. It's the first time since that same race of 1991.
But all were mere footnotes to Tilahun, who showed the investigators with hand gestures how he sailed on the incessant hills of the course and was able to convey the fact that it helped him to direct Bix once before. Bix 7 in the past. Tilahun was second behind triple winner Silas Kipruto in 2016 and Solomon Deksisa in second the year before.
In one of the strangest episodes in the history of Bix, Ethiopian Maregu Zewdie was in the lead of the fourth stop after crossing under the skywalk at Davenport RiverCenter, thinking that C & B Was the finish line. Edward Muge from Kenya pbaded him to win
Nothing was going to stop Tilahun on Saturday.
He had a small lead over Flanagan and the rest of the squad on Kirkwood in the fifth mile of the race when he decided to just take control. In what seemed a little more than a wink, he opened a 7-second margin on Flanagan.
"I do not know if the word is surprised, but I've been impressed," said Flanagan, who just finished his university career at the University of Michigan last month. "I knew that by coming here, there were a lot of very experienced riders who knew the course well.It was very obvious by this move.
" He took off. It was a very experienced tactic that he made there. Thanks to him because it was really hard to answer. As soon as he escaped, he simply kept pace. It was really hard to close it. At that time, I thought at least that I would not catch it, did not let the gap widen and was just trying to focus on what was in front of me, rather than behind me. I just used it as a guide to get me to the finish and in the best place possible.
Tilahun's margin only increased in the last or the last two kilometers of the race and he went through in 32 minutes, 39- seconds. It was 19 seconds ahead of Flanagan. Bix 7's two-time champion, Leonard Korir, was third with Colley fourth and Kipruto fifth.
Americans Josh Izewski, Ryan Mahalsky and Joe Stilin were eighth to tenth.
Izewski, a Colley teammate on the Zap Fitness team, was leading the turn of McClellan Boulevard with Kipruto close to him.
The former star of the University of Florida confessed he did not really "After being released in 5:13 (for the first mile), it seemed like he was not there. There was nobody who wanted to go as fast as I did to run my own race, "said Izewski. "In the end, I thought I did everything I could, probably not the smartest thing to go out so fast, I probably could have finished a few places higher, but you live and you learn." [19659002] Flanagan also learned that he had learned a lot by earning $ 4,000 in his first professional race.
He said that he took the course on Friday, he would not really know how to tackle it before going out on the street with the other runners.He said that he spent a lot of time watching Kipruto, Korir, Tilahun and others who ran the race before.
"My head was on a pivot all the time," said Flanagan. "I knew the guys to watch, I knew the experienced runners. I went by giving them a lot of credit. "
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