Team USA’s Ryan Hall dropped out of the 2012 Olympic Marathon around mile 11 Sunday morning, an obviously disappointing result for the owner of the fastest time ever run by an American. And considering he’s never really had a bad marathon, seeing him step off the course was especially shocking.
Ryan Hall: ‘I’m Kind Of In Shock’
But maybe no one was more shocked than Hall himself, as he told NBC:
Just had some hamstring tightness going into the race and it was something that was getting progressively worse as I was going, and I start to feel my stride start to alter. From the beginning, it didn’t feel fluid ... I was trying to work through it the best I could, but it got to a point to where it wasn’t going to let me continue. It was the first I’ve ever DNF’d in my life, so, ya know, it’s a real bummer. I’m kinda in shock right now. It hasn’t really hit me, what just happened. One of those things where it’s going to take some time to get through. You gotta have big perspective, I guess, and know what your body can handle and what it can’t and today it just ... wasn’t ... wasn’t in the cards.
Abdihakem Abdirahman followed with a DNF of his own, just moments after Hall, leaving Meb Keflezighi as the only American still running. At the 25km mark, he was 1:49 off the lead, in 14th place.
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