Busan, Oct 14: Lee Bong-Ju of South Korea, who won last year's Boston marathon, pulled away at the halfway mark today to take the gold medal in the Asian Games marathon.

The games' defending champion moved ahead at the 22-kilometer mark and kept the lead to finish in 2 hours, 14 minutes and 4 seconds. Koji Shimizu of Japan took the silver, crossing the line in 2:17:47. Japan's Ryuji Taeki was third in 2:18:38.

Wearing colorful sunglasses and a white headband, lee started waving at the cheering crowd at the end of his lap around Busan main stadium. He then ran a victory lap with a large South Korean national flag. Shimizu, Taeki, Lee and his teammate Lim Jin-Soo had crossed the 20-kilometer mark together. Minutes later Lee started pulling ahead of Taeki, followed by shimizu. Lim fell to a distant fourth.

Taeki, the only runner with a marathon time under 2:08, started falling further behind. By the 35-kilometre mark, Lee was two minutes ahead of Shimizu, who had already passed Taeki. Lee, a two-time Olympian and South Korea's record holder, won the 2001 Boston marathon with a time of 2:10:30 to break a 10-year Kenyan winning streak.

Bureau Report