Maru Teferi of Israel made history on Sunday by becoming the first athlete from his country to win a medal at an international marathon.
Teferi earned silver in the men’s marathon at the World Athletics Championships, after passing his rivals in the last leg of the race. Leul Gebresilase, an Ethiopian runner who won the bronze medal, was just seven seconds slower than Teferi’s pace of 2:09:12 hours.
Victor Kiplangat of Uganda won the gold medal for a fantastic performance that took 2:08:53.
Teferi said after his success, „I’m so excited and happy to represent my country on such a big stage and bring honor to myself, my country, and my family.“ „I made the decision to go all in. I pondered about catching up to Leul Gebresilase when I noticed that he was sluggish in the last km, and in the end, I did.
Teferi, the first Israeli distance runner to accomplish this achievement, turned in a performance that was a career high by winning his first-ever medal at the World Championship.
His previous best performance was an 11th-place showing in the tournament held in Oregon the previous year.
Teferi began the race by conserving energy and picking up the pace over time. He was among the thirty runners after the first hour, but as the race went on, he started to pass more and more of them, moving up to sixth place.
He persisted in his tactical tactics, and in the final five kilometers, he passed Tamirat Tola, the 2022 World Champion and medalist from the Tokyo Marathon, to take third place.
But just before the finish line of the race, he made a crucial final effort and secured the historic second position. Teferi finished as the runner-up at the 2022 European Athletics Championship in Munich and helped the team that won the gold medal in the team marathon category.
His 13th-place finish at the Tokyo Olympics was the greatest ever for an Israeli runner at an Olympic competition. In December 2022, he won a gold medal at the Fukuoka Marathon in Japan.
Teferi is now the fourth Israeli to earn a medal at the World Athletics Championship, thanks to her outstanding accomplishment. The only man before him was Alex Averbukh, who jumped 5.80 meters to win bronze in the pole vault at the 1999 tournament in Seville.
Two years later, in Edmonton 2001, Averbukh earned a silver medal with a leap of 5.85 meters. Hanna Knyazyeva-Minenko, the 2015 global silver medallist in Beijing, was the first Israeli woman to take home a medal. She also broke the Israeli record in the triple jump with a leap of 14.78 meters. Lonah Chemtai Salpeter won bronze in the marathon last year in Eugene, Oregon, with a timing of 2:20:18 hours, making her the first Israeli woman to do so.
JOIN US ON WHAT'SAPP, TO GET INSTANT STATUS UPDATES AND BE IN THE KNOW.
CLICK HERE
