Late start, good finish for Piggott
The Lafayette High assistant track coach scrambles to place eighth in the A-B Colonial Half Marathon. Runners from Belarus and Ukraine win.


BY GEORGE WATSON/CORRESPONDENT

Published February 28, 2005

WILLIAMSBURG -- John Piggott won't be offering any rides to next year's Anheuser-Busch Colonial Half Marathon. Count on it.

Picking up a friend for Sunday's 26th annual event delayed Piggott, and he was late for the start. He sprinted more than a half-mile from William and Mary Hall to the starting line at Barksdale Field, only to see the last of the pack of some 1,300 runners crossing Jamestown Road.

"And I still had to take off my sweats," said Piggott, 39, a Williamsburg resident and assistant Lafayette High track coach.

Still, Piggott managed to finish eighth overall (1 hour, 12 minutes, 56 seconds) in a field that was dominated by foreign runners for the seventh straight year.

"I didn't get to stretch, but my legs felt good," he added. "If I had been there on time, I probably would have finished in the top five."

But there was no way Piggott was going to catch the leaders, no matter when he started. Azat Rakipov of Belarus outdueled Kenyan Charles Kibiwot for first place, winning by just nine seconds, 1:05:22 to 1:05:31. Both times beat the Carter's Grove Road/Kingsmill course record of 1:05:46 set in 1998 by Mark Andrews of Chapel Hill, N.C., the last American to win the race.

Rakipov and Kibiwot, both policemen in their respective countries, first met two weeks ago in Texas at the Austin Marathon, where Rakipov finished second and Kibiwot sixth.

Rakipov led for the first 11 miles before Kibiwot briefly passed him. After that, Rakipov, a finalist in the 1992 Olympic 1,500 meters, said through an interpreter that his competitive juices kicked in and he retook the lead.

Another late arrival was Kenyan John Kipruto Korir, one of the pre-race favorites, who was even later than Piggott. Korir did not explain why he was late, but he still managed to finish third, more than five minutes behind the winner.

"I think I could have been first," said Korir, who has a half-marathon personal best of 1:02:45. He won the Naples, Fla., half marathon last month in 1:05.22, equaling Sunday's record time.

In the women's division, Casey Smith of Arlington figured she finally had a chance when three-time defending champion Anna Pichrtova of the Czech Republic did not run. Smith had finished second and third, respectively, the past two years.

But Tetyana Hladyr of the Ukraine kept the winner's trophy in foreign hands, too, easily outdistancing the second-place Smith 1:19:44 to 1:21:28.

"She just kept pulling away at a constant pace," Smith said of Hladyr. "I just had a really bad day."

Smith had run 1:18:52 last year.

Running for his first time in the Masters Division (40 years and older), Newport News resident Rob Hinkle finished second in 1:16:18 despite being ill. He beat out two-time defending champion Chuck Moeser (1:17:31) of Sterling. Mark Malander of Oak Hill was the Masters winner in 1:15:22.

"I guess I wasn't as sick as I thought," said Hinkle, a 40-year-old W&M professor.

W&M senior Trevor Cable was fifth overall in 1:11:35.

He ran track and cross country for the Tribe for three years before giving it up last spring. He entered the race as part of "Team Blitz," a group of about 10 buddies who get together every day and run.

"I was hoping I could finish in the top five," said Cable, who plans to enter next month's Shamrock Marathon in Virginia Beach. "I was at least familiar with the course today because I used to help out at the water stations."