Minnesota native Emma Bates again finishes as the top American in the Boston Marathon

BOSTON (AP) — Minnesota native Emma Bates again finished the Boston Marathon course on Monday as the top American.

Sisay Lemma, the 2021 men’s champion in London, held on down Boylston Street to finish in 2 hours, 6 minutes, 17 seconds — the 10th fastest time in the race’s 128-year history. Hellen Obiri defended her title, becoming the first woman to win back-to-back Boston Marathons since 2005.

Bates, the 31-year-old Elk River native, came in 12th after last year’s fifth-place finish. However, it’s still a rebound from her appearance at the Chicago Marathon last fall, where she tore a tissue in her foot and left the course in a wheelchair. A setback during her recovery then forced Bates to withdraw from the Olympic marathon trials in February. So, instead of planning for Paris, Bates was running Boston again on Monday, a year after she led the pack through Brookline, with the crowd chanting her name.

“That was the coolest thing I’ve ever done in my career, that’s for sure,” she said last week. “Being in the lead and setting myself up for the most success that I could have on that day, it was just really special to know that as long as I trust myself, as long as I go after it, that I can do pretty big things.”

On a day when sunshine and temperatures rising into the mid-60s left the runners reaching for water — to drink, and to dump over their heads — Obiri ran with an unusually large lead pack of 15 through Brookline before breaking away in the final few miles.

Obiri also won New York last year, and is one of the favorites heading into the Paris Olympics. She said she told herself: “I’m not giving up. I’m not going to let this one go.”

Emma Bates of Boulder, Colorado, finished 12th — her second straight year as the top American. CJ Albertson of Fresno, California, was seventh, his second top 10 finish.

Switzerland’s Marcel Hug righted himself after crashing into a barrier when he took a turn too fast and still coasted to a course record in the men’s wheelchair race. It was his seventh Boston win and his 14th straight major marathon victory.

Hug already had a four-minute lead about 18 miles in when reached the landmark firehouse turn in Newton, where the course heads onto Commonwealth Avenue on its way to Heartbreak Hill. He spilled into the fence, flipping sideways onto his left wheel, but quickly restored himself.

“It was my fault,” Hug said. “I had too much weight, too much pressure from above to my steering, so I couldn’t steer.”

Hug finished in 1:15:33, winning by 5:04 and breaking his previous course record by 1:33. Britain’s Eden Rainbow-Cooper, 22, won the women’s wheelchair race in 1:35:11 for her first major marathon victory; she is the third-youngest woman to win the Boston wheelchair race.

The otherwise sleepy New England town of Hopkinton celebrated its 100th anniversary as the starting line for the world’s oldest and most prestigious marathon, sending off a field of 17 former champions and nearly 30,000 other runners on its way. Near the finish on Boylston Street 26.2 miles (42.2-kilometers) away, officials observed the anniversary of the 2013 bombing that killed three and wounded hundreds more.

Sunny skies and minimal wind greeted the runners, with temperatures that rose into the 60s in late morning. As the field went through Natick, the fourth of eight cities and towns on the route, athletes splashed water on themselves to cool off.

“We couldn’t ask for a better day,” former New England Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski, the grand marshal, said before climbing into an electric car that would carry him along the course. “The city of Boston always comes out to support, no matter the event. The weather is perfection, the energy is popping.”

The festivities began around 6 a.m., when race director Dave McGillivray sent about 30 Massachusetts National Guard members off. Lt. Col. Paula Reichert Karsten, one of the marchers, said she wanted to be part of a “quintessential Massachusetts event.”

The start line was painted to say “100 years in Hopkinton,” commemorating the 1924 move from Ashland to Hopkinton to conform to the official Olympic Marathon distance. The announcer welcomed the gathering crowds to the “sleepy little town of Hopkinton, 364 days of the year.”

“In Hopkinton, it’s probably the coolest thing about the town,” said Maggie Agosto, a 16-year-old resident who went to the start line with a friend to watch the race.

The annual race on Patriots’ Day, the state holiday that commemorates the start of the Revolutionary War, also fell on One Boston Day, when the city remembers the victims of the 2013 marathon bombings. At the finish line on Boylston Street, bagpipes accompanied Gov. Maura Healey, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu and members of the victims’ families as they laid a pair of wreaths at the sites of the explosions.

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Associated Press writer Jennifer McDermott in Hopkinton contributed to this report.