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VIDEO: Must-see Barbados 10K finish reaches 11 million views, gets airtime on ESPN

Must-see footage of the Run Barbados 10K finish featuring Lanni Marchant and Natasha Wodak has been making rounds on social media this week. (Photo: Inge Johnson / Canada Running Series.)

Run Barbados

Run Barbados

Earlier this week, Canadian Running posted a sequence of photos showing a close finish between Canada’s Natasha Wodak, Lanni Marchant and Trinidad and Tobago’s Tonya Nero. Since then, video footage of the Run Barbados 10K has been seen more than 10 million times on Facebook and was aired on ESPN.

Two of Canada’s long-distance Olympians were down south for the Run Barbados race weekend and competed in the Colombian Emeralds International 10K on Saturday and the half-marathon on Sunday. Wodak and Marchant had a significant lead with approximately 400m to go in the 10K and held hands just metres from the finish. At the last moment, Nero sprinted past the two, to their surprise, and broke the tape.

RELATED: Race recap: Fun in the sun at Run Barbados including remarkable 10K finish.

The final results listed Nero in 36:36.49, Marchant second in 36:37.39 followed by Wodak in 36:37.49. Inge Johnson was able to capture the moment with still images, which can be seen in GIF form at the top of this page. The story has since been picked up by ESPN, on the segment Around the Horn. The ESPN show is an American sports round table discussion show. The show airs on TSN in Canada.

The race finish went viral after a Facebook user captured a screen grab of the finish from a local television network. That video, which is embedded below, has been seen more than 11.5 million times, with 149,000 shares, since Dec. 5.

Original video

Segment on ESPN

Marchant told Alan Brookes, the race director for Canada Running Series, that “Natasha and I planned to run together and hold hands across the line regardless of any placing. I was hurting and I told Natasha to go at 6K and at 8K, but she stayed. That despite the perceived competition between us we ran as friends and teammates, which is the whole point of our Betty and Veronica…’Frenemies.'”

Both Wodak and Marchant competed for Canada at the 2016 Rio Olympics in the women’s 10,000m. Marchant also doubled running the women’s marathon. In early November, Marchant ran the fastest time by a Canadian at the New York City Marathon finishing seventh overall. Both have run under 32 minutes for 10K.

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