Ethiopian Pair Win 44th Shelter Island 10K

They’re back, and much like the one line from the 1986 horror film “Poltergeist,” that could be scary news for local runners.

One of the things that made the Shelter Island 10K, “the destination race of Long Island,” as stated on this year’s T-shirts, is that it attracted world-class runners from all over the world, including Kenya, Ethiopia and other hotbeds for distance running. But ever since the COVID-19 pandemic, it has been hard for those runners to make their way to the East End. It seems as though this year’s race, the 44th of its kind, may be the first real sign that the event is finally making its return to glory.

Yenew Alamirew Getahun, 33, who calls New York City his home, but is a native of Ethiopia, according to his Wikipedia page, won the 6.2 mile race in 31:02.03, which is a 5:00 mile pace. Fantu Zewude Jifar, 26, who is originally from Ethiopia as well, and currently calls the Bronx home, was the female champion, crossing the finish line in 33:51.70. Both Getahun, who represented Ethiopia at the 2012 Summer Olympics, as well as in two indoor and one outdoor World Championships, and Jifar were double champions on Saturday, having won the New York Road Runner’s Queens 10K earlier that morning. Getahun won that race in 30:13 while Jifar won in 33:36.

Speaking through an interpreter, fellow Ethiopian Girma Bedada, who finished ninth overall, Getahun said it was a good day to run.

“It’s nice to be a double winner,” he said, through Bedada. It was the first time for both Getahun and Bedada to visit Shelter Island and they plan on being back next year.

“From running in the morning, he was a bit tired, but the course is good,” Bedada said.

Max Norris, 28, of Narberth, Pennsylvania, finished second overall in 31:07.03, then Jordan Daniel, who won the race the past two years and was very much going for the three-peat, crossed the finish line in third place in 31:18.82, followed closely by Zacchaeus Widner, 32, of Lansing, Michigan, who finished in 31:21.17. Ben Tuttle, 30, coming off his Bridgehampton Half Marathon victory last month, rounded out the top five, finishing in 32:29.20.

Joshua and Jason Green were expected to be the first Shelter Island residents to finish the 10K and they were. Joshua, 23, finished sixth in 32:46.81, while Jason, 20, finished seventh in 33:02.41.

Daniel, 28, a Westhampton native who won the Long Island Marathon last month, was planning on possibly trying to do exactly what Getahun did — win the Queens 10K in the morning, then the Shelter Island 10K in the evening. He attended a wedding the night before, though, and wasn’t feeling up for running in the morning, so he opted to only run Shelter Island.

Daniel said that at about a mile and a half into the race, the top runners in the field started to take over and he was in fifth or sixth place. He ran a little relaxed at the start, he said, since it is such a long race, but by mile 2, Getahun started to take off and he had a solid lead of about 20 yards that he only improved upon the rest of the race.

Daniel, meanwhile, had a good race going with Widner to finish in the top three and get on the podium. Daniel caught up to him around mile 4, he said, until Widner caught back up to him and overtook him in mile 5.

“There’s something about that home stretch right here where you get a little boost,” he said. “I would have been really pissed had I not gotten on the podium, so I really put a surge in and I caught him. He kind of put a surge in and I felt him coming, but I had a lot of momentum, blacked out and finished it up.”

Cara Udvadia, 26, of Clifton Park, New York, finished second among women in 36:13.12, Meseret Desalegn Yrpaw, 24,of Washington, D.C., finished third in 37:07.74, Elizabeth Caldwell, of Glen Head, New York, finished fourth in 37:22.06 and Tsegereda Ayela Girma, 28, of Washington, D.C., rounded out the top five women in 38:24.97.

Peter Hawkins, 59, of Malverne, beat out friend and Shelter Island native William Lehr, 65, and Norbert Holowat, 25, of Williston Park, in the wheelchair 10K. Hawkins finished in 36:21.77.

Fabián Daza, 41, of Fairview, New Jersey, won the 5K race in 16:25, while Dominga Rivera, 19, of Bridgehampton was the female champion of the 3.1-mile race in 19:22.86.

For full results, go to elitefeats.com.

With nearly 1,300 coming out to participate, the event seems to be getting back to prepandemic numbers, when in 2019, for its 40th anniversary, had more than 1,600 compete. Mary Ellen Adipietro, who has been race director since 2000, thought that if it wasn’t for the weather, numbers, as good as they were, could have been even better. And Adipietro was referencing both Saturday’s weather, which featured a strong mix of both sun and storms, with showers coming in both before and at the end of the races, and the wildfires in Canada. She was told by her timing company, Elite Feats, that due to the unknown of the smoke from those wildfires, people basically stopped registering for many races in the region.

Adipietro expects numbers to continue to climb next year with more elite runners from around the world starting to come back.

“Now that things are pretty free, I think we’ll probably get up to 20 more in the elite race,” she said. “Things should be back to normal by then.”

One new addition to this year’s race that Adipietro was excited about was Strides for Success, a new initiative by both Elite Feats and Northwell Health that encourages kids from disadvantaged communities to participate in running. She said young runners from Brentwood and Freeport, along with their coaches, were in attendance on Saturday, and even got to meet legendary runners and longtime fixtures of the Shelter Island 10K, Bill Rodgers and Joan Benoit Samuelson. Both Rodgers, a former Olympian and four-time winner of both the New York City and Boston marathons, and Samuelson, an Olympic Gold Medal winner, explained how the lifelong sport of running has changed their lives for the good.

This year’s race was dedicated to its longtime race director, James “Jimmy” Richardson, who preceded Adipietro from 1979 to 1999. Richardson died in February at the age of 69, but his family was in attendance on Saturday. He had a very succinct saying after every race that he became synonymous with — “They came, they ran, I’m done.”

“The family was very, very happy that Jimmy was honored,” Adipietro said.

The race continued to raise funds for local charities, such as East End Hospice, Timothy Hill Children’s Ranch and the Shelter Island 10K Community Fund. Throughout its years, the event has raised close to $1,000,000.