Not even the heat of the late-summer spoiled the party and the success of the tenth edition of the Half Marathon Sport Zone, that took place last Sunday, September 18th in Porto and Gaia streets. There were good results and 5.286 athletes finished the 21.097m of the main race, around 11 thousand participants, confirming the event as a major reference at sports and social level.

In all the nine editions of the Half Marathon Sport Zone, the victory only escaped from the kenyans twice, and always for world record holders, first time in 2009 for the ethiopian Haile Gebrselassie, and later in 2011 for the eritrean Zersenay Tadese.

This year the triumph was not kenyan again and the winner was the ugandan Daniel Rotich, an athlete from the same part of the globe, on Rift Valley, with a surname shared by many Kenyans, eastern neighbours of this country without sea sights. Daniel Rotich reminded that Uganda has many long-distance valuable runners and a shared school with kenyan neighbours, and from there came the Olympic champion in London Marathon 2012, Stephen Kiprotich, who, at the time, overcame two Kenyans, Abel Kirui and ... Wilson Kiprotich. This is the way to confirm the sharing of surnames on both sides of border, and on Sunday the sixth classified was another Kenyan, Lucas Rotich.

With 1h00m59s Daniel Rotich had an excellent final time, especially if we consider the heat that was felt, and significantly improved his personal record on 61m40s, which was established in Kampala, on September 2nd 2012.

Emmanuel Bor, the kenyan winner in 2015, was 4th this time.

In the women's side, confirming the correctness of the bet initiated last year, a Japanese debut to win. Isaka imposed in 72m12s to the kenyan Martha Akeno (73m16s), and as the male winner set a new personal record, surpassing 9 seconds the marc that had already made this year on February 14th in Yamaguchi. Also this triumph of Isaka, which had been foreshadowed by the third place of Misaki Kato in 2015, meant the first time in Porto that a non-African won, as the nine previous editions kenyan had won eight times, and the only one who didn’t stay at the top of the podium were replaced by the ethiopian Berhane Adere in 2010.

Filomena Costa was third and she was the fifth woman that get on the podium on Porto Half Marathon history, after Marisa Barros, in the first edition in 2007, Ana Dulce Felix in 2011, Leonor Carneiro in 2012 and Sara Moreira in 2014 and 2015.

With 73m27s, Filomena Costa proved to have been training hard for the Porto Marathon, which will happen on 6th November, being 41 seconds of her personal record, established in Manuela Machado Half Marathon, at Viana do Castelo, in January 2015.

Above all the kenyan Paul Tergat, multiple cross world champion and former world record holder of 10.000 m and half marathon, gave the starting shot of the race and, at the end of the event the great distance portuguese runner Paulo Guerra was honoured been with a well-deserved tribute.

At ten years old, the Porto Half Marathon Sport Zone proved to be alive, young and on a natural growth. Now we are going to wait for a new decade with much expectation.