Strong Women's Marathon Team..

The following chart shows the average personal best times for teams that have 5 runners entered. The Ethiopian Women's team have the best time 2:23:43 followed by Japan 2:25:00. The margin is more than a minute.




ETH 2:23:43
JPN 2:25:00
KEN 2:25:32
CHN 2:29:01
UKR 2:29:47
USA 2:32:38
KOR 2:33:16

On paper this is a great team. Two issues that may affect the result:
1) Have the runners ran too many races this year?
2) The question is how will they perform in warm weather?

The second almost always is an issue with Ethiopian marathon runners and has been discussed extensively on this blog.

It would be a big disappointment if Ethiopia does not earn a medal. It would be a huge disaster if the team does not finish in the top 3 team race.