“We will be competitive again,” said Salazar, who helped pace Armstrong, “but it’s unrealistic to think we will ever dominate marathoning again.”

In the men’s race, a pack of nine runners led for the first three-quarters of the race. Gomes made his move heading into the Bronx, quickly opening a half-minute lead and maintaining it for the next few miles.

Wearing black gloves and sleeves up over his biceps, a black cap and yellow tank top, Gomes came across the finish line with his arms raised, then made the sign of the cross. Wide smiles crossed the Kenyans’ faces as they finished behind the winner and immediately embraced Gomes, who wore a pained look.

Prokopcuka separated from the other favorites in the opening few strides of the race on the Verrazano Bridge, and joined Tatiana Hladyr of Ukraine in a breakaway as the race wound through Brooklyn. By the time the race reached Manhattan, the two Eastern European women had built their lead to 40 seconds.

They kept pouring it on, extending their lead to nearly 90 seconds — more than a quarter-mile on the streets of New York — as they headed into the Bronx and then back into Manhattan, where Prokopcuka moved away from Hladyr for the final segment.

Prokopcuka broke the tape and kept on jogging for a few strides, bouncing on the balls of her feet as she pumped her fists in the air. She later said she had no idea why the other top runners didn’t stay with her from the start.

“I didn’t understand what was going on. It was a situation I couldn’t understand,” she said.

Hladyr finished second in 2:26:05, exactly a minute behind Prokopcuka. A pair of Kenyans, four-time Boston Marathon winner Catherine Ndereba and 2006 Boston winner Rita Jeptoo, were third and fourth. Katie McGregor, an American making her marathon debut, was ninth.

Kastor had vowed to run a tactical race, and said the other top women’s runners may have done the same thing — worrying so much about each other that perhaps they didn’t take Prokopcuka’s break seriously enough.

“I think we were being a little tentative, and by the time it was ready to roll it was too late,” she said. “Tactically, this was a very strange race. There were so many respectable women out there that everybody was waiting for somebody else to make a move.”

The women’s and men’s winners of the race, whose primary sponsor is Dutch financial services company ING, earned $130,000.

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