Meb Keflezighi yesterday became the first American man to win the New York City Marathon since 1982.
Derartu Tulu of Ethiopia captured the women's race, with two-time defending champ Paula Radcliffe falling back to fourth then grabbing her left leg in pain after finishing.
Keflezighi, the 2004 Olympic silver medalist, learned after a disappointing performance in the U.S. Olympic trials in New York two years ago that he had a stress fracture in his hip. He capped the long and painful comeback with a landmark victory against a deep field for his first major marathon title.
Born in Eritrea, the 34-year-old runner became a U.S. citizen in 1998. He was second in New York in 2004 and third in 2005. Wearing "USA" on the front of his jersey, Keflezighi won in 2 hours, 9 minutes, 15 seconds.
Tennis
■ Serena Williams defeated big sister Venus again yesterday, winning 6-2, 7-6 (4) in the WTA's season-ending tournament for her third victory of the season in Doha, Qatar.
Serena Williams also won Wimbledon and the Australian Open, and clinched the year-end No. 1 ranking earlier in the week.
Serena broke twice in the first set and lost only seven points on serve. She looked sharper than Venus in every facet of a match that featured few long rallies and only a glimmer of the spectacular tennis that the two have provided in some of their previous meetings.
■ The chief executive of the WTA Tour says that a new scheduling system with fewer mandatory tournaments has caused player withdrawals to fall by more than one third.
The tour lowered the number of tournaments top players must enter from 13 to 10 this year and extended the offseason by two weeks.
Tour CEO Stacey Allaster said Sunday after the final of the season-ending Sony Ericsson Championships that the new scheduling has been "a fantastic success."
She said player withdrawals from top events is down by 34 percent compared to last year.
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