q
<--- Craig Mottram Celebrates His Win in the NY Healthy Kidney 10km in Central Park.21 May 2006 Defending champion Craig Mottram ran away from the field to keep his Healthy Kidney 10km crown on Saturday in convincing fashion, but the victory was a bittersweet one for the Australian Olympian as he failed by just three seconds to set a Central Park 10km record and collect a $10,000 record bonus.
Running virtually alone from the 2km mark, Mottram finished in 28 minutes and 13 seconds, coming up 3 seconds short of the Central Park mark set by Kenyan Paul Koech in 1997.
Grabbing the lead early, Mottram pushed forward and was on record setting pace through the halfway mark at 14:05.
The longest part might have been the final uphill 400 meters when Mottram put on a strong 66 second closing sprint in his record bid. But Mottram promised to keep coming back for the record, a chore made a bit more appealing after New York Road Runners officials announced that the race sponsor, the Embassy of the United Arab Emirates was raising the course record bonus for next year to US$15,000.
Mottram was pleased to run 15sec faster than his 2005 winning time, although disappointed to miss the record "I'm a little disappointed, I was 14:05 at the half way mark which was right on track, but the second half is slightly tougher, slightly uphill and I was always going to be on my own". Of the last stretch he joked, "The last 500m is straight uphill, if they can flatten that out that would be great".
Running on his own from 2km made the task of breaking the record more difficult, but he said his priority was to win "If you can win a race in the first 2km why wouldn't you? Why wait for the last 5km? We go out and try to win the race first then look at records".
Not all was lost on the day as Mottram prolonged his streak of 10km road race victories to 12 stretching back to 2001. He also won this third consecutive road race in New York City; in addition to his Healthy Kidney victory last year, he also won the Continental Airlines Fifth Avenue Mile last September. The win earns Mottram US$7500.
Mottram's training partner, Mohamed Farah of England, passed both Linus Maiyo of Kenya and early front-runner Anthony Famiglietti of the United States in the second half to finish second in a personal best 28:37. Famiglietti was third in 28:40 And Maiyo fourth in 28:46. Mohamed Amyn of Morocco was fifth in 29:01.
Mottram will now turn his attention to the track and run the 2km at the next week’s Prefontaine Classic in Oregan before heading to Europe to run the mile at the Bislett Games Golden League meet in Oslo on 2 June and the 3km at the British Grand Prix meet at Gateshead on 11 June
with Richard Finn
