Dominic Ondoro was confident even back in the fog halfway through his first Grandma’s Marathon. Even then he was leading a swift pack of 11 East African runners that emerged almost mystically from the foggy North Shore and then disappeared again.
They were running at a pace that put them in reach of Dick Beardsley’s 33-year-old record time, but after consistently turning sub-5-minute miles, reaching the halfway point in 1:04:46, Ondoro and the group slowed down measurably, and it appeared once again the magical record would stand.
It turned out to be a strategic move by Ondoro, who, wearing bib No. 1 and running easily in front, decided to slow down, just to see if he might coax one of his competitors to show his hand and make a break for the lead. Instead, the pack slowed down, too.
When the group slowed, did Ondoro think that he could still break the record?
“Yes,” he said softly.
With about seven miles to go, Ondoro took off like a Formula 1 race car whose driver just realized he had neglected to engage top gear. He pulled ahead, then pulled ahead more. Usually, when someone breaks from a group running that close together, at least a couple others stay reasonably close. Not this time. When he ran up Lemon Drop Hill and sailed away down London Road, Ondoro got to the brick-covered area of Superior Street, at 5th Ave. E., he was running alone. There were the pace and media cars ahead of the field, and then one lone runner. When he disappeared onto West Superior Street, a look back to the east revealed nobody.
“I knew what the record was, and halfway through, I knew I could break the record,” Ondoro said. “I doubled my speed and nobody came with me.”
Beardsley, riding in his now-customary spot in one of the pace cars just ahead of the field, said someone called out to him: “Your record’s safe for another year.”
“Not the way he’s running,” Beardsley yelled back.
“I’ve never seen a nicer, smoother-looking runner,” Beardsley said afterward. “When they got to the 19.5 mile mark, there were still eight of them running together. But when he put the hammer down, nobody kept up with him. He looked back once, to see if anybody was close. Nobody was there. And he was running 2:29.5 miles there near the end.”
Ondoro is 26, which means he was seven years from being born in Eldoret, Kenya, when the greatest race in Grandma’s Marathon’s history was run, back in the event’s infancy.
It was 1981, and defending Grandma’s champion Garry Bjorklund pushed Dick Beardsley to the limit before Beardsley persevered and covered the distance in 2 hours, 9 minutes, 37 seconds, blistering the 26.2-mile marathon from Two Harbors to Canal Park. The record he broke had been set in 1980, one year before, by Bjorklund, whose winning time remained the event’s second-swiftest until Saturday. And Bjorklund’s second-best time behind Beardsley in 1981 was still the eighth best. Since then, for 32 consecutive years, several hundred of the best runners in the world have come to Duluth, filled with hope of breaking that record, only to leave with that stubborn 2:09:37 standard still standing.
But Dominic Ondoro came to the North Shore on Saturday as a tall, lean man on a mission, and when he made his lengthy finishing surge, he reduced 10 strong competitors to an East African supporting cast. So dominant was Ondoro’s  2:09:06 time that when Betram Keter beat former Grandma’s winner Christopher Kipyego to the Canal Park finish line by a second to capture second place, they were almost three full minutes behind, at 2:11:58.
The straight chute ending with the abrupt rise at Lemon Drop Hill, which has undone so many worthy challengers over the years, was a speed bump to Ondoro. “I’m used to hills,” he said. “That’s the way I’m training. Eldoret is very hilly, in the mountains, so I’m used to this.”
Eldoret is a small village, and Ondoro and his family lived about two miles out of town, he estimated. He has run all his life, as a way of life, in Kenya.
He had only run marathons for four years, but he has established his preference for running swiftly. Ondoro won at Melbourne, Australia, with a 2:10.17 time, and he won last year at Tiberias, Israel, in an eye-popping 2:08.0.
“I liked the course,” Ondoro said. “I liked the fog, too. When I won at Melbourne, it was foggy like this.”

John Gilbert has been writing sports for over 30 years. Formerly with the Star Tribune and WCCO. He currently hosts a daily radio show on KDAL AM.