Posted: March 27, 2006

Athletics: Kastor To Race Berlin Half-Marathon

From David Monti

© 2006 Race Results Weekly, all rights reserved RaceResultsWeekly.com

SCC-Running, organizers of the Vattenfall Berliner Halbmarathon, announced their elite fields for 26th edition of the event scheduled for Sunday, and they also said that the race will be the largest in their history.

"We've got 18,893 entries from 67 nations so far and we are more than happy with it," said race director Mark Milde who was referring to the total entries for all events. The half-marathon itself has 15,937 entrants; last year's half-marathon had 12,261 official finishers.

The race's leading entrant is American 10,000m, half-marathon and marathon record holder, Deena Kastor, of Mammoth Lakes, Calif. Kastor, in addition to trying to win in Berlin and possibly break her own U.S. record of 1:07:53 set in Philadelphia last September, will be trying for the U.S. records at 10 miles (51:47) and 20 km (1:05:52) at this event. Milde and his team have invested in additional timing equipment and course measurement to assure those en route marks will be accurately recorded.

"So it might be that we will have three U.S. records in total on Sunday," said Milde.

USA Track & Field and the IAAF recognize en route times for record setting purposes, as long as the same course measurement, timing and course configuration requirements are met as for finish line distances. The Association of Road Running Statisticians does not recognize en route times for record setting purposes.

Kastor will be racing Kenyan veteran Edith Masai, who also has a 1:07:53 career best time, and the American and the Kenyan should be able to break the course record of 1:08:22 set by Joyce Chepchumba in 2000. Luminta Zaituc will carry Germany's hopes into the race. The silver medalist from the 2002 European Championships marathon has a 1:09:35 career best time.

Kenyan athletes are set to dominate the men's race, led by Paul Kosgei (59:58 personal best), Lawrence Kiprotich (60:30), Evans Cheruiyot (60:14), Joseph Ngolepus (60:56), and Silas Kirui (61:07) amongst others. The men's course record is 59:52 by Fabian Roncero of Spain set in 2001.

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