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The Picton Gazette THURSDAY, OCTOBER 9, 2014
VOLUME 1 8 4 , N O . 4 1
InsIde
thiS week
Kiptoo repeats at County Marathon Kenyan battles through back pain to edge out talented newcomer Sunday adam bramburger Staff writer
REUNION
rosehall native defies the odds to find her biological family Page 14
REVIVAL
wellington Dukes back on track with big weekend Page 20
REALIZED
County’s age-in-place plan moves forward with sod turning Page 30
seCtIons
Looking back.......6 Weather.............6 Editorials.............7 Letters....................8 Sports....................20 Classifieds.............25 Puzzles.................RE CaNaDa’S OLDeSt COMMUNitY NewSPaPer
An ailing champion and a talented newcomer added some intrigue to the running of the 11th County Marathon, Sunday, but ultimately experience prevailed at the finish line. Kenyan Gilbert Kiptoo, 31, retained his title as the fastest male competitor in the full marathon, turning in a time of 2:26:00, narrowly defeating 25-yearold newcomer Clay Patterson of Portland, Ontario who crossed the line near the Crystal Palace just 57 seconds after Kiptoo. Patterson was running in his first full marathon and he was impressed with his performance. “I’ve done three halfs and I wanted to try a full, so I trained all summer for it. I just had a go at it,” he said. “This one is a pretty fast course from what I’ve heard and it’s not so big, so I was hoping to get a little bit of money. I wasn’t sure who would show up, but I thought one or two good people would.” Patterson said Kiptoo found his way to the front of the pack of 164 runners within the first two kilometres in Wellington and he never gave up the lead at any point in the race. “He got about 400 metres on me and he just held that. There was maybe a distance of 100 metres at certain points,” Patterson said, adding he didn’t have any illusions of winning the marathon. “He’s quite a bit better than that. I think he’s capable of a lot more. I heard he did another marathon a couple weeks ago and most people can’t do two in a span of two weeks. That shows that I’m not in the same league as that guy, but I’m satisfied with my performance anyway.” Kiptoo acknowledged Patterson’s efforts to a fellow runner, noting “he’s good” and adding the rookie actually changed the way he approached the race. The defending champion said he was planning to run a safe race, but decided that he couldn’t hold back and take a chance against youth. “I had to change my mind and just go for win-
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all alone Despite a lingering back injury, defending County Marathon champion Gilbert Kiptoo led the full marathon race for about the last 40 kilometres as he coasted to the finish line to retain first-place honours Sunday. (Adam Bramburger/Gazette staff)
ning the race,” he said. For Kiptoo, who says he comes to Picton each year because he has friends who organize and run in the competition, the race wasn’t his best. He said he was pleased with his efforts because he had to fight through some difficulties to stay ahead and claim first place. “I started this race very poorly,” he said. “I had a bad back pain when we started and that lasted 30 kilometres before the wind was removed. I struggled, but by 30 kilometres I was still inside the course record.”
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R E A L
Kiptoo acknowledged he actually thought Sunday’s conditions were better than he had experienced in previous years — minus the strong wind off the lake — and he felt he could challenge the course record, which is just a hair over two hours and 23 minutes. He said he thought he might have eased off down the final stretch, however, leaving him just shy of that outcome. Race director Mark Henry said he was excited to see both a challenge for the record and a story like Patterson offered specta-
E S TAT E
tors Sunday morning. “For his first marathon, that was incredible. He was 57 seconds slower than our esteemed veteran, who has been there in the past. “It’s just amazing, there’s somebody who may have only discovered he can run, but he certainly can. We’re thrilled to see somebody do that here and hopefully he’ll come back next year to take a championship on his own,” he said. “We’d love to see them back here going head-to-head.”
See RACE, page 21
S E C T I O N
The municipality's mayoral candidates had a chance to reach a large number of Ameliasburgh residents Monday night. Not a seat was left in Ameliasburgh Town Hall as moderator Bill Bonter posed questions to mayoral candidates Paul Boyd, Jeff Goddard, and Robert Quaiff. The all candidates meeting was organized by the Ameliasburgh Town Hall Working Group and the Consecon and Area Ratepayers Association (CARA). The first question Bonter asked: How would you keep taxes within the range of cost of living increases without compromising existing services? Quaiff said over his eight years on council there have not been consistent, predictable tax increases. “I'm a firm believer that, based on the senior population in Prince Edward County, we should be basing our tax increased more in line with the consumer price index,” he said. “If we do that we'll do a much better job, but we'll still have to continue to lobby the province and the federal government to get our funding the way that we should.” He said this term of council began with $435,000 in reserves and will finish with $4.3 million. “The fiscal part of it has worked pretty well with this council,” he said. Goddard said there are ways the municipality could cut taxes through reductions in expenses and increased revenues. “I believe the provincial park — Sandbanks — doesn't pay anywhere near the share of what they should pay to keep our roads going,” he said. “(There are) thousands of visitors a year ruining our roads and they give us only this small pittance.”
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