See how the 2024 Boston Marathon unfolded
He never looked back, because it didn’t matter who was chasing him. Sisay Lemma was competing against the clock and against a course that had bedeviled him.
Three times in the last seven years, the 33-year-old Ethiopian had taken the line in Hopkinton and come to grief, dropping out in 2017 and 2022 and finishing an unnoticed 30th in 2019.
On Monday morning, Lemma put all of that failure behind him, running the final 20 miles alone to win the 128th Boston Marathon by 41 seconds in 2:06:17, holding off countryman Mohamed Esa and Kenya’s two-time defending titlist Evans Chebet down the stretch.
“I’m very happy that I won today, because several times after past races I joked that I was going to come to Boston and redeem myself,” said Lemma, the first man from Ethiopia to win here since Lemi Berhanu Hayle led a podium sweep in 2016.
This triumph was about determination and daring. Lemma had claimed the London crown three years ago, and his blazing 2:01:48 in Valencia in December made him the fourth-fastest performer in history.
He could have returned next Sunday to London for a chance to run another fast time on an easier course and lock down a place on his country’s Olympic team.
But Lemma wanted to prove that he could prevail on an up-down layout that had busted him thrice before.
“Boston is a good course because it is a tough course,” he said.
Running Valencia, which is as flat as a slice of Jamon Iberico, is like zipping along the Charles River. But Lemma attacked Boston as if he were doing a time trial, breaking free of the pack after 5 kilometers and leading by 25 seconds after 10.
“Since there was no pace-setter, I decided that I wanted to start fast early and they were the ones following me,” said Lemma. “So I could set the pace of my run.”
It wasn’t just Lemma’s margin at 10K that was jaw-dropping. It was also his time (28:28), which was 40 seconds below the split that Kenya’s Geoffrey Mutai posted in 2011 when he set the course record of 2:03:02 that then was a world best.
Yet as Lemma motored along by himself, the gap only grew larger and the splits faster at each checkpoint. At 15 kilometers, his lead was 1:21 and his time of 42:43 was 1:05 seconds below Mutai’s. At 20 kilometers, it was 1:39 and 1:32.
By then the chase pack was down to four — Chebet and colleagues John Korir, Albert Korir, and Cybrian Kotut. They knew that Lemma was up ahead of them somewhere, but nobody was thinking about reeling him in.
Chebet was bidding to be the first man to win here three consecutive times since countryman Robert Kipkoech Cheruiyot in 2006-08.
But he’d withdrawn from last autumn’s New York City Marathon with an Achilles’ tendon injury and decided against pushing things in the heat.
“I watched as it was increasing,” he said. “Then it was a different decision to stay together with my pack, to run with the others so that we could come together as a team and finish together.”
Chebet had won the last two races by biding his time and moving to the front when it suited him. Certainly Lemma couldn’t keep up an insane pace on a warm day with the Newton trimount still to climb.
Yet he did. His half-marathon clocking of 1:00:19 was faster than it was in Valencia. His lead was up to 1:49 and his time was 1:39 below Mutai’s. But Lemma’s legs were feeling it.
“I was running very hard and very good,” he said. “But after that, it was getting harder and harder to run.”
Yet after he took the firehouse turn onto Commonwealth Avenue, Lemma still was ahead by nearly three minutes and still well under the course mark.
But the up-down-up-downs began taking their toll.
“After the 30-kilometer mark, that was very hard,” Lemma said. “Not the hills. The downhill after.”
After he came off Heartbreak Hill and onto the Haunted Mile along the “Cemetery of Lost Hope,” Lemma’s lead over Chebet and the Korirs was melting and he was off the course record.
At Coolidge Corner with 2 miles to go, the gap was down to 1:30, and Chebet and John Korir were gradually closing. But unless Lemma’s wheels came off, there wasn’t going to be enough course left for them to catch him.
Just past Kenmore Square, his lead over Chebet was still 1:16. On his fourth attempt, Lemma finally was going to come down Boylston Street with nobody ahead of him. When he crossed the painted line, he lay across the hardtop and thrust his hands to the skies.
Lemma’s victory came with a gilded laurel wreath and a $150,000 payday. It also may bring him a return ticket to this summer’s Olympic Games when his federation chooses the three entrants for Paris.
Lemma went to Tokyo three years ago and didn’t finish. For the man from Addis Ababa, one dose of redemption in the Hub just may produce another at Olympus.
John Powers can be reached at john.powers@globe.com.