Video: Kenya’s Geoffrey Kamworor gets trampled on start line and still wins gold
Watch as Kenya's Geoffrey Kamworor recovered from a fall on the start line to win the world half-marathon championships in Wales on Saturday.
Kenya’s Geoffrey Kamworor had a brutal start at the world half-marathon championships taking a nasty fall at the beginning of the race.
Geoffrey Kamworor, the Kenyan athlete who won the IAAF world half-marathon championships on Saturday, had a rather significant spill at the beginning of the race losing valuable seconds over the first kilometre. Fortunately, Kamworor was not injured.
As seen by the below video, the 23-year-old fell to his knees and was trampled by other runners before getting up and weaving his way through the field. He was able to make up the lost ground within the first few kilometres and went on to win the race in near record time.
He ran the first mile at a ridiculous speed, covering it in 4:15 (see below tweet), well ahead of world record pace. He ended up winning in 59:10 with teammate Bedan Karoki in second and Olympic champion and local favourite Mo Farah in third.
How many places did Kamworor lose at the start? Must be at least 100. He ran a 4:15 mile to get back to the front. https://t.co/ACSfpEy6dp
— Steven Mills (@Trackside2016) March 27, 2016
Judging by the video, the Kenyan passes hundreds of runners in the first 200m of the race as he weaved through traffic and congestion. Oddly, the mass crowd started at the same time as the men’s race while the women’s race started 35 minutes earlier. World championships typically get a exclusive starting area.
Watch the below footage of the start as Kamworor recovers and passed hundreds of runners:
The man who filmed the video appears to get about 75 metres from the start line before Kamworor blows past him.
The Canadian women finished sixth as a team led by Lanni Marchant while Reid Coolsaet was the top male finisher for Canada.
RELATED: Do it for the team: High school runner gets spiked in the face and still finishes.
Nothing was to stop @GKamworor from winning in #Cardiff2016. Not even a fall at the start pic.twitter.com/ie6jNxsmTp
— IAAF (@iaaforg) March 26, 2016
As seen above, Kamworor had a bit of damage to his knees. He also lost his white hat at the start line, which allowed announcers to quickly recognize which of the five Kenyan races went down.
Kamworor has won the world half-marathon championships on back-to-back occasions winning in 2014 in Copenhagen before yesterday’s triumph in Wales.
For many of the runners who started near the front of the pack, they can now say that they were ahead of a world champion, albeit for only a few seconds as Kamworor recovered and made his way back to the lead pack. It’s not everyday that you can say you were beating a world champion in a race.
Still, Kamworor’s finishing photo is not as epic as this high school runner’s picture as he crossed the line after being spiked in the face.
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