Blind Marathoner Finishes In Less Than Three Hours

Henry Wanyoike placed 363rd among men in the marathon yesterday with a time of 2 hours, 52 minutes, and 18 seconds. The 33-year-old from Kenya, blind since suffering a stroke in 1995, runs tethered by a rope to his partner, Joseph Kibunja. Mr. Wanyoike currently holds the world record time for visually impaired marathon running, completing the Hamburg marathon in 2005 in 2 hours, 31 minutes, and 31 seconds.

He is the defending gold medalist in the 5,000-meter and 10,000-meter races at the Paralympics, having won both in Athens in 2004, and holding a gold in the 5,000-meter event from the 2000 Sydney Paralympics as well.

"You can make it wherever you are, in whatever profession, despite the challenges," Mr. Wanyoike told The New York Sun last week. "You can still make it if we can make it in this marathon."

An international running celebrity, Mr. Wanyoike said he ran to draw attention to his cause of preventing and curing blindness. He is a spokesperson for Seeing is Believing, a charity run by his sponsor, Standard Chartered bank, that helps fund international efforts to combat the disability, many cases of which are preventable.