Boston want Mutai’s time to be a record

BOSTON - One day after Geoffrey Mutai won the Boston Marathon in 2 hours, 3 minutes, 2 seconds - the fastest time ever for the 26.2-mile distance - race officials said they will ask track’s international governing body to certify his time as a world record even though the course is technically ineligible.

“Sure,” Tom Grilk, the executive director of the Boston Athletic Association, said Tuesday. “Why wouldn’t we?”

With temperatures in the 50s and a steady, significant tailwind - perfect marathon weather - Mutai ran almost a minute faster than the official world record of 2:03:59 set by Haile Gebrselassie in Berlin in 2008. But Mutai’s mark is doomed to be recognized only as a “world best,” not a “world record,” because the Boston course is too downhill and too much of a straight line to meet IAAF standards.

Fourth-place finisher Ryan Hall’s 2:04:58 was the fastest ever for a U.S. runner; it is likewise ineligible to be recognized as the American record because the national governing body has similar rules to the international one, according to Jim Estes, the manager of long-distance running programs for USA Track and Field.

Hall didn’t seem to care about being ineligible for an American record, but he didn’t feel like his time was tainted, either.

“There’s no disappointment for me,” he said on Tuesday. “I was sitting there last night and I’m saying, ‘I’m a 2:04 marathoner.’ I don’t care if it’s the course, or the wind, or anything. I’m a 2:04 marathoner.”

Still, Boston officials said they would apply to have the records certified, which would force the governing bodies to reject an unprecedented performance on the world’s most prestigious course. Runners are lining up behind Mutai to insist that any rule that excludes Boston, a race that predates the IAAF itself, is itself flawed.

“The IAAF must come and see Boston, and look, from start to finish, and see,” Mutai said. “It is 42 kilometers, up and down the whole way. This is 42 kilometers; the other, that Gebrselassie ran, is 42 kilometers. It is not easy.”

In fact, no one is saying that Boston is easy - certainly not anyone who’s run the grueling hills from Hopkinton to Copley Square. But IAAF rules that encourage flat, loop courses were created to weed out marathons designed to produce artificially fast times with downhill courses or favorable weather.

Ironically, they wound up excluding Boston, the world’s oldest and most traditional marathon course - with the possible exception of the path the Greek messenger Pheidippides took from Marathon to Athens to start it all 2,500 years ago.

“This is the most time-tested course in the world,” 1986 Boston winner Rob de Castella said Tuesday. “Just about every great marathoner in history has run on this course. Boston was around when Pheidippides was a boy. You can’t take away from this amazing performance. It’s a record performance, beyond a shadow of a doubt.”

De Castella and other marathoners also noted on Monday that the governing bodies will recognize a record - including Gebreselassie’s Berlin run - that has been set with the help of professional runners hired to maintain a steady pace. Runners say having pacesetters can be a far bigger boost than Boston’s 459-foot drop in elevation, or a tailwind.

“For these guys to do what they’ve done without pacesetters on a tough, hilly course is phenomenal,” de Castella said. “It’s a shame if there’s any hesitation to acknowledge the outstanding athletic feat that we saw yesterday.”

Grilk said that the 115-year-old race isn’t going to change to meet the IAAF criteria. No matter what the record book says, runners will know. “If somebody wants to put up a dome and chase Swifty, the rabbit from Wonderland (dog track) around, God bless them,” Grilk said. “We’ll keep doing what we’ve been doing for 100 years: firing off a gun and saying, ‘Go.”’

AP