Gebrselassie wins but misses record

Haile Gebrselassie clinched the Standard Chartered Dubai Marathon title for the third successive year.

But it was an unconvincing victory in a slow time of two hours six minutes nine seconds.

Despite achieving his hat-trick, Gebrselassie failed by a big margin to challenge his 18-month-old world record of 2hr 3min 59sec in an attempt which never materialised from the start of the race.

The race began at a snail's pace and the nearest margin the pacemakers got to the figure he set in Berlin was 38 seconds when the pack went through nine kilometres in 26 min 43sec.

Thereafter it went even further off schedule and instead of it passing through the halfway point in 61min 59sec, a pack of seven went through in a time of 62 min 51 sec.

Gebrselassie seemed to have another success sewn up when breaking clear after 31 kilometres but received a shock when fellow countryman Chala Dechase came on his shoulder just over two kilometres later.

However he did not panic and finally pulled away on his own just after 37km to finish ahead of Dechase by 24sec and Eshetu Wendimu, who made it a clean sweep for Ethiopia when repeating his third place of 12 months ago in a time of 2hr 6min 46sec.

Mamitu Daska won a much closer women's race by eight seconds ahead of fellow Ethiopian Aberu Shewaye in 2hr 24min 18sec with Helena Kiprop of Kenya third in 2hr 24min 54sec.