BOSTON — When the runner with the braided ponytail sprinted off during the first mile of the U.S. Olympic team trials for the women’s marathon Sunday morning, race favorite Deena Kastor stayed back. She had calmly pegged the sudden leader as a non-contender who would tire and come back to the field.
But when Kastor, the 2004 Olympic bronze medal winner in the event, saw the ponytailed woman’s face at the first turnaround of the loop course, she realized her first mistake: This was no running neophyte, it was Magdalena Lewy-Boulet, who had placed fifth at the 2004 Olympic trials marathon before taking time off to have a child.
And as Kastor chased Lewy-Boulet for nearly two dozen miles, she realized this, too: Lewy-Boulet wasn’t coming back. Kastor was going to have to get her.
After miles of increasing self-doubt and panic, she finally did.
Kastor said she had just about accepted defeat when she mounted one last surge that Lewy-Boulet could not escape, finally passing her during the 23rd mile and holding on to claim victory in the 26.2-mile race in 2 hours 29 minutes and 35 seconds. Lewy-Boulet finished in second in 2:30.19, and Blake Russell, third in 2:32.40.
“For a moment, I thought I was going to win the race,” Lewy-Boulet said. “But in the back of my mind, I knew Deena was coming.”
The three earned spots on the U.S. team that will compete in August in Beijing.
Zoila Gomez and Tera Moody battled for fourth place — the Olympic alternate — with Gomez finishing in 2:33.53 and Moody in 2:33.54. Joan Samuelson, the gold medal winner in the 1984 Olympic marathon in Los Angeles, ran what could be her last marathon at age 50 and finished in 90th place among 124 finishers in 2:49.08.
Meantime, Herndon’s Samia Akbar, who entered the race with the fourth-best qualifying time, hung with the lead pack for the first half of the race, but faded in the second. She finished 18th overall in 2:39.19.
“I guess I just didn’t respond well in the second half of the race,” Akbar said. “I definitely hit a little bit of the wall.”
Kastor wondered if she had, too. By the fifth mile, Lewy-Boulet was in front by more than a minute. For the next 15 miles, she maintained or built on that margin. Just past the race’s halfway point, she led by more than two minutes. At mile 19, Kastor trailed by 1:41.
“The crowd kept yelling that I was 1 minute and 40 seconds back,” Kastor said. “Even though I was picking up the pace, the gap wasn’t shortening, so I was panicking for a few miles there. … There was a long set of miles in the middle of the race where I thought I misjudged it.”
Lewy-Boulet did not expect to be running by herself, but she felt comfortable throughout and wasn’t worried she had gone out too fast. Since giving birth to a son nearly three years ago with her husband, former U.S. miler Richie Boulet, she had gradually gotten back into the shape that allowed her to challenge at the Olympic trials four years ago and win the Pittsburgh Marathon in 2002.
But her qualifying time for this race was pedestrian: she completed the 2006 New York City Marathon in 2:42.38 just over a year after her son’s birth. The time out of elite competition deprived her of a major sponsorship and forced her into full-time employment: she has been working as an assistant coach at UC Berkeley, since last spring, when she gave up her job in the research department of the company that manufactures GU Energy Gel.
A native of Poland, Lewy-Boulet emigrated to Germany with her mother and brother during her high school years before moving to California. She received her U.S. citizenship on Sept. 11, 2001, during a ceremony cut short by the tragic events of that day.
“I just wanted to be on this team,” Lewy-Boulet said. “Motivation just came from all over. … This is a dream come true for me. I can’t even explain how exciting it is.”
Russell had plenty of motivation as well. After leading for most of the 2004 trials, she collapsed in the late miles and finished fourth overall, just missing a spot on the Olympic team. She received $30,000 for her finish Sunday, with Kastor winning $50,000 and Lewy-Boulet, $40,000. All also received Olympic bonuses of $10,000.
Kastor clearly profited the most, but it wasn’t just her take-home paycheck. The race proved she could handle even surprising race developments. Kastor ran the last half of the race more than three minutes faster than the first.
The noise from the thousands of enthusiastic spectators who lined the course prevented Lewy-Boulet from hearing footsteps, so she couldn’t be sure Kastor was closing in. But, she said, she knew.
“For a while there, they were telling me the gap was 1:40,” Lewy-Boulet said. “Then they stopped telling me. So I knew she was coming.”
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