Reinhold Tomas came in 42nd position when he made his debut in the men’s marathon on Sunday morning at the just ended Olympic Games in Tokyo, Japan.

The long-distance runner who formed part of Team Namibia’s 11 athletes was the last Namibian athlete to compete in an event at the Olympics, which was the men’s marathon that saw 105 athletes from 45 different countries challenging each other for top honours.

Tomas who started the race well in the opening kilometres (km) of the race started losing momentum to the leading group from the 15km mark as he trailed behind with 37 seconds and by the halfway mark of the marathon, he was a minute and 57 seconds behind.

Eliud Kipchoge of Kenya successfully defended the title he won in 2016 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, as he made his intentions clear with 12km left in the race.

The Kenyan who holds the fastest time in marathon running of two hours, one minute and 39 seconds (02:01:39) which he clocked at the Berlin Marathon in 2018 retained his Olympic title with a time of 02:08:38, beating Abdi Nageeye of the Netherlands who was a minute and 20 seconds behind in a time of 02:09:58, while Bashir Abdi of Belgium was two minutes, 38 seconds behind the winner with a time of 02:10:00 in third.

Tomas was nine minutes and 50 seconds behind the winner with a time of 02:18:28.

At this year Olympic Games, Team Namibia won a single medal – a silver through Christine Mboma in the 200m sprint. Mboma’s medal is the first to be won by a female athlete from Namibia and it was also the first for the country in 25 years.

The last time Namibia won a medal at the Olympics was in 1996 when Frank Fredericks won two silver medals in 100m and 200m in Atlanta, United States of America.

Source: Namibia Press Agency