Deriba Merga, one of the pre-race favorites, dropped out of the contest

Tsegaye Kebede repeated his third place finish from the Olympics last year as Kenyan Abel Kirui took the men's marathon title at the 12th IAAF World Championships in Berlin, Germany on Saturday morning.

Youngster Yemane Tsegaye (2:08.42) followed Tsegaye (2:08.35) across the finish line to finish fourth, but Deriba Merga, who had led the pack through much of the race; dropped out of the race at the 40km failing to live up to his pre-race expectations.

But it was another excellent morning for rivals Kenya with Emmanuel Mutai (2:07.48) following Kirui to take second, while Robert "Mwafrika" Cheruiyot finishing fifth and give the East Africans the team title ahead of Ethiopia and Japan.

The architect of the Ethiopian downfall was the ferocious pace set by Deriba in the third and fourth 5km splits with only Tsegaye and Deressa Chemssa able to follow suit when the Boston Marathon champion led the pack through in 14.49 and 14.55. Despite their attempts, Tsegaye and Deressa each dropped behind at the 18km and the 23km points, but Deriba continued to stick with leaders Kirui and Mutai until the 37km point where the Kenyan duo simply sailed past him.

Deriba struggled to cope up with the two leaders before he was overtaken by Tsegaye one kilometer later before eventually slowing down and dropping back.At the head of the pack, Kirui pulled away from Mutai at the 38km point and looked comfortable enough as he powered to victory in a new championship record time of 2:06.54 with Tsegaye coming in third ahead of Yemane, who completed a remarkable turnaround in the race by coming from 13th at 20km to take fourth.

"The course was nice and flat, but it had too many corners," said Tsegaye after the race. "The race was held in mid-day and in warm weather. We did not train for warm weather in our country and that did not help us." 

A disappointed Ethiopian national marathon team coach Zelalem Desta said he did not expect the result, but was delighted for Yemane, who achieved an outstanding turnaround in the race. "The race was too fast today," he said. "We did not expect this kind of result. I thought that Tsegaye would win the race. Actually, the best result today was from Yemane. He has improved a lot today from 2:12 [September 2008] to 2:06 in Paris and now he has run 2:08 here again. That is a good reason to be happy."

Twenty-two year old Yemane added, "This is a big result for me. I did not expect to achieve this because the best runners in the world are here. I am really happy about this."