For one day a year, the streets of New York belong to the pedestrians.
The 47th running of the New York City Marathon took place on Sunday, spanning from Staten Island, through Brooklyn and ending in Central Park in Manhattan as an estimated 50,000 people took part in the festivities.
There was little determent from the day’s participants despite it being just five days after the terrorist attack in Tribeca on Tuesday in which eight people were killed and 17 were injured.
Shalane Flanagan added to the patriotism on Sunday when she became the first American woman to win the NYC Marathon since 1977 when Miki Gorman won her second-straight race.
Flanagan’s time of 2:26:53 was the fastest time ever run by an American woman in New York.
It was her first-career world marathon title in what could very well have been the 36-year-old’s final race as she said prior to Sunday that a win in New York would mean retirement.
Flanagan’s win also broke the three-year winning streak held by Mary Keitany of Kenya.
The last seven women’s marathon winners hailed from Africa.
A pair of Kenyans took the top two spots in the men’s division as Geoffrey Kamworor defeated fellow countryman and 2014 winner Wilson Kipsang by just three seconds with a time of 2:10:53.
That three-second gap between first and second-place finishers is the third-closest margin in race history.
Five of the past six NYC Marathon winners have hailed from Kenya.
Arizona’s Abdi Abdirahman had the fastest time of any American man, finishing the race in 2:12:48, good for seventh place.
There was no such drama in the wheelchair division as both the men’s and women’s winners took home a title in comfortable fashion.
Switzerland’s Marcel Hug finished the marathon in 1:37:21, over two minutes better than John Charles Smith of the United Kingdom, who came in second.
Brian Siemann was the highest-finishing American in 12th place.
Another Swiss native, Manuela Schar, won the women’s wheelchair championship as her time of 1:48:09 was almost three minutes better than the United States’ Tatyana McFadden.
