NAIROBI, Kenya, Oct. 26 /Xinhua-PRNewswire/ -- China's Lulu Li came third in the opening leg of fifth series of The Greatest Race on Earth (GROE), when finishing 19th overall in today's Standard Chartered Nairobi Marathon.
The 19 year-old completed the course in 2 hours 52 minutes 57 seconds, while Shouquan Wang crossed the line in 282nd place (2 hours 52 minutes 53 seconds) in the men's marathon which was 17th place in GROE.
Lulu Li's result was good enough to earn the Chinese Nations Challenge women's team first place in the North East Asia and Rest of The World category, while Wang's time earned the men's team fourth place in the regional category.
Lulu Li from China commented, "I'm not very pleased with my performance today, I should have done better than this. Last year I was second in the overall marathon and first in The Greatest Race on Earth here. My times have gone a bit downhill. I had a fall during practice before coming out here but fortunately there wasn't any serious damage so it didn't affect my run today.
"I think if I had been running alongside a team rather than as an individual I would have done better as we could have pushed each other. My GROE team and I have been practising as a group but obviously when you get out here you're on your own. I hope my GROE team-mates can do a bit better than I've done."
23 men's and 13 women's international teams are competing for the GROE USD 1 million prize fund. Teams of four runners each take part in one marathon, with the winning team being the one with the quickest cumulative time.
Following Nairobi, GROE moves on to Singapore on 7 December, before going to Mumbai on 18 January and finishing in Hong Kong on 8 February.
The Chinese Nations Challenge Men team is made up of Teng Ma (Singapore), Shuai Yuan (Mumbai), Meng Li (Hong Kong), while the women's team consists of Xiaoyan Guo (Singapore), Xin Zhang (Mumbai), Fengxia Yang (Hong Kong).
Footage from the marathon will be transmitted via APTN on Sunday 26th October at 1215-1230 GMT and on Monday 27th October 2008 at 0115-0130 GMT.
For more information, including downloadable footage and images visit:
http://video360.world-television.com/GROETV/2008-cn.html
