Bhutan’s Kinzang Lhamo fulfills promise of finishing women's marathon

August 11, 2024 4:26 PM

Bhutan’s Kinzang Lhamo, who was her nation's flag bearer at the Opening Ceremony, filled her promise to finish an Olympic marathon. She was the final finisher, in 80th place, with a time of 3 hours, 52 minutes and 59 seconds. Hundreds of fans walked, biked and ran beside her in the final few kilometers in support of her effort. Thousands of fans also remained at the finish line to cheer her completion of the 42+ kilometer event.

Lhamo's time was about an hour and a half behind The Netherland's Sifan Hassan, who won the closely fought race, Hassan finishing just ahead of Ethiopia's Tigst Assefa. (Links to videos provided by NBC Sports on youtube.)

posted by maxwelton (14 comments total)

Posted this because it was nice and improved my day, hope it does that for someone else. :)
posted by maxwelton at 5:01 PM on August 11 [8 favorites]

This was nice, thanks for posting. I'd love to hear some follow-up from her about what her experience of this support was like. The TV announcers were pretty high on it but I'd love Lhamo's perspective. Was it thrilling? Humiliating? Confusing?
posted by saladin at 6:10 PM on August 11 [2 favorites]

Lovely. Thank you for posting!
posted by humbug at 6:27 PM on August 11

Anyone have a non-geoblocked link?
posted by dobbs at 7:08 PM on August 11 [1 favorite]

thank you for posting! i got some really disheartening news yesterday and i needed to see this.
posted by lapolla at 7:18 PM on August 11 [1 favorite]

No video for me either :-( Here's a link with some photos that people outside the centre of the universe can read.

This epitomises what sport should be about, not just at lower levels, but everywhere. It's participating and completing that is worth it, not just winning. Sure, you want to win or at least do as well as you can, but being part of a sport like running is a buzz even if you are just another stranger in the crowd. Being one of only three athletes from Bhutan, I guess she may have had more determination to finish that most would.
posted by dg at 8:55 PM on August 11 [3 favorites]

Flagged as fantastic. So inspiring.
posted by PareidoliaticBoy at 9:21 PM on August 11

What do you call the person who graduates last out of med school? Doctor!
Kinsang Lhamo? Respeck!
posted by BobTheScientist at 12:23 AM on August 12 [1 favorite]

If there was any kind of back story in the video, I missed it. According to Wikipedia, she won the last two Bhutan marathons, so she earned the honor of representing her country. Her personal best is 3h 26m, which is a very respectable time, but well off the elite level.
posted by Horselover Fat at 8:00 AM on August 12

dog’s Reuters article ends with John Stephen Akhwari statement about why they pushed to the end, injured and limping over the marathon finish line:

"My country did not send me 5,000 miles to start the race. They sent me to finish the race."
posted by zenon at 8:04 AM on August 12 [1 favorite]

Logged in for the first time in literal years to say how much I love these stories. It's been a bit of a contentious issue around my house: As much as I appreciate Simone and Ilona and Sha'Carri, I honestly don't care as much about the US team (as an American) as I do about the little stories in the little sports. The absolute worst Olympic shooter or kayaker or fencer or break dancer is orders of a magnitude better than I ever could be. Yes, even the Australian competitor. But, like, at the closing ceremony, I didn't want to see minutes of the camera lingering on Katie Ledecky--astonishing as she is and as lucky as I feel to inhabit the earth at the same time as her kind of talent--but instead I wanted a summary of "So and so from Lesotho, who won the first-ever medal in any competition for the tiny country." Those are the stories, to me, that make the Olympics the Olympics, and not another story about the United States or China with their endless resources dominating the medal count yet again. It's not at ALL to disparage any of the competitors from the top-tier countries or top-tier sports: it's the opportunity to see the world compete, even the less successful competitors in the less "popular" sports, because every single Olympian is extraordinary, and US coverage just failed and failed and failed to give us that perspective.
posted by socratic at 12:39 PM on August 12 [4 favorites]

This is a nice write up with a bit more detail (or maybe more "atmosphere"), from the Washington Post, via MSN.com.
posted by maxwelton at 8:11 PM on August 12 [2 favorites]

I've been around a lot half-marathons and full marathons, and it's not uncommon to see the crowds cheer on the last runners. But I've never seen them run so far along side the course or cheer so loudly. What a lovely group of spectators. The announcers were fabulous too, so happy at what they're seeing.
posted by etaoin at 9:04 PM on August 12 [1 favorite]

I've long held that every event should feature a normal person for perspective on just how good the last place Olympic athlete is. People enter in a pool for whatever sport(s) they want. Then people are randomly selected from that pool maybe six months to a year out from the games. Doctors check them over to make sure they're able to safely compete in the event and then they're provided access to whatever coaching and equipment they need to train.

Then they compete like any other athlete. Every once in a while they'd happen to land on someone that could make a decent go of it and that would be exciting but mostly they'd just get absolutely crushed by the entire field of actual Olympians but I think everyone would have fun with it.

Definitely agree that NBC's coverage sucked. Even at the US Gymnastics Olympic trials was terrible. If I hadn't been at the actual event I wouldn't have known about at least a half dozen other athletes there that weren't the folks at the top of the list. And that list had changed dramatically because of injuries that happened shortly before the competition (Skye Blakely) during warm ups on day 1 (on literally the first vault anyone did on that table that day), or during the first day of competition.

And if you're not a US gymnast? You may as well not even exist.
posted by VTX at 9:06 AM on August 16