Boston Marathon Champion Reaches Out to City Torn by Attack

BOSTON — It was October, six months after Lelisa Desisa of Ethiopia won the stricken 2013 Boston Marathon. He had returned for another race. On his way to dinner with friends, he had a request. He wanted to cross the finish line again on Boylston Street to reclaim in a private moment a triumph made irrelevant by tragedy.

“No one knows who I am,” Desisa, 24, said, according to Chris Gooding, a member of his management team who accompanied him.

Upon reaching the finish on April 15 last year, Desisa smiled and wore an olive wreath and held aloft a silver loving cup. He was champion of one of the world’s great marathons. But this is not the memory that endures.

Read more at: New York Times