Friday, April 12, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.
It took several weeks for the truth to come out, but an impostor won the Feb. 11 Las Vegas International Marathon's women's half-marathon race, race director Al Boka confirmed.
The day of the race, a woman identified as Animo Sun of Japan was declared the half-marathon champion after finishing the 13.1-mile course in 1:11:05. Boka has since learned the actual identity of the half-marathon champion is Yuko Arimori, a member of the Japan National Team and the silver medalist in the women's marathon at the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, Spain.
"This is the damnedest thing," Boka said. "After I heard about this and saw a photograph of Arimori at Barcelona, I said 'Sure enough, that's her.' "
During the Las Vegas race, the contestant identified as Sun battled Poland's Aniela Nikiel for the lead through the first 11 miles before pulling away to lead by 90 yards at the 12-mile mark. Following the race, Sun was quoted by an interpreter as saying "It was fun."
It turns out there is no such person as Animo Sun.
"I had my suspicions, but I didn't know about this until just last week," Boka said. "When this woman Sun won our race, I remember thinking 'Who the hell is she?' But there were so many other things going on, I didn't give it much more thought at the time."
Boka had been expecting Arimori to run in Las Vegas.
"There's a guy named Brendon Riley in Albuquerque who trains elite runners," Boka said. "Before the race, he called me and said he had some elite runners from Japan who were coming to Las Vegas to run. Arimori was supposed to be one of them and I thought that would be neat. But when it got to race day, she wasn't here and that was that.
"Then, eight days ago, Riley calls me up and says 'I've got a surprise for you' and told me how he'd learned that Sun was really Arimori. The word was out in Japan."
The obvious question: Why did Arimori feel the need to disguise her identity?
Apparently, Arimori felt she had nothing to gain and everything to lose by running under her own name in Las Vegas.
Since placing second at Barcelona she had been injured and out of action for two years until running a marathon last August and finishing with a time (2:29:17) considered borderline for the course.
Her spot on Japan's 1996 Olympic marathon team -- which is chosen by a selection committee, not through trials -- was in jeopardy, and if she had run under her own name and finished poorly in Las Vegas, she probably would have been deleted from consideration for the 1996 Olympics at Atlanta.
But after returning to Japan and revealing that she won in Las Vegas, Arimori was told her position on the '96 Olympic team was secure.
At Barcelona, Arimori finished in 2:32:49 and placed a close second to Valentina Yegorova of the Commonwealth of Independent States, who finished in 2:32:41.
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