The final day of the 2012 Olympics was gloriously sunny. Hot, in fact – especially for the participants in the men’s marathon, the last athletics event of the Games.
Tsepo Ramonene looked particularly warm. I was watching from Westminster Embankment, and every lap the 21-year-old from Lesotho slipped further and further from the leaders.
Lesotho’s Tsepo Ramonene walks to save himself for one last push towards finish before he crosses the line – running – last in the men’s marathon at the London 2012 Olympics
He wasn’t last until the final lap, when Timor-Leste’s Augusto Soares went past him. By the time he came past my vantage point at the 25-mile mark, it was easy to see why he had slipped into 85th place – he was walking.
The marathon crowds were brilliant, packed in all along the route and cheering each runner as he went past: “Come on Andorra”; “Keep going, Mexico”; “Well done, Liechtenstein”.
This habit of referring to an athlete by their country, incidentally, caused a bit of a problem with Guor Marial, whose plain black kit was emblazoned simply with ‘IOA’ – Independent Olympic Athlete. Marial is from South Sudan, but the world’s newest country does not have a National Olympic Committee so he could not compete under their flag.
Marial finished 47th, half-way between the two British runners, 11 and a half minutes slower than Uganda’s Stephen Kiprotich, who took gold.
He was still more than 35 minutes quicker than Ramonene, who looked totally exhausted as he strolled past the dispersing crowds, every other athlete having already finished.
But Ramonene finished. Twenty of the 105 competitors did not, and however slow he might have been, he made sure he completed the course. And his exploits also earned him one of the biggest cheers of the day as – with the crowd roaring him on – he picked up his walk into a run for one final flourish.
An Early Bath 