The 18th Dubai Marathon was held on Friday with Ethiopian runners sweeping the top-three places in both men's and women's events.
Male winner Tamirat Tola stormed to a new personal best and broke Dubai's course record in the process.
The event began at 6:30 local time with close to 30,000 runners waiting at the starting line. The pre-race favorite in the men's race, Ethiopia's triple Olympic champion Kenenisa Bekele, withdrew close to the halfway stage due to an injury sustained after a fall.
Tola knocked several seconds off the previous Dubai course record in his personal best time of 2:04:11. He remained confident of future success at this year's World Athletics Championships in London.
"This time is my best time for my history. I'm very happy. My next target is to do exactly the same [to win and become] 10,000 (meters) world champion for my country," said Tola.
In the women's event, Worknesh Degefa crossed the line in 2:22:36, continuing an 11-year winning streak for Ethiopian women in the Dubai Marathon.
The two winners will get 200,000 US dollars award each.
Eight wheelchair athletes participated in the marathon with Spaniard Rafael Botello finishing first in 1:31:19. Canadian Josh Cassidy, who holds the unofficial fastest time for a wheelchair competitor, failed to secure a top-three spot after tiring.
"I was expecting to get faster than the course record today. For the first third of the Marathon we were on pace for breaking the course record by maybe six or seven minutes, so by a lot. And then just [had a] really hard fall. After that I just struggled, wasn't feeling great," said Cassidy.
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