Cheruiyot looking for fourth Boston Marathon win

By Svea Herbst-Bayliss

BOSTON (Reuters) - Kenyan holder Robert Kipkoech Cheruiyot will seek a fourth Boston Marathon title in six years on Monday and a chance to run at the Beijing Olympics in August.

The lanky 29-year-old, who set a course record of two hours seven minutes and 14 seconds on Boston's infamous hills in 2006, faces a handful of his countrymen in a race Kenya has dominated since 1991.

"I say let me do it fast in Boston," Cheruiyot told reporters on Friday. "I hope to qualify for the Games (on the) toughest course in the world."

No elite U.S. runners entered this year because the course is tough and the race comes a day after the nation's top women compete for three spots on the U.S. Olympic team.

Deena Kastor, who won bronze at the 2004 Athens Games, is heavily favoured to win Sunday's women's trials on a course through Boston and nearby Cambridge along the Charles River.

Five past Olympians, including 50-year-old Joan Benoit Samuelson, are among the 181 women who qualified to race on Sunday. But only about six have a real chance to make the U.S. team according to Amby Burfoot of Runner's World.

"Deena is clearly the best female runner in the country, so if she doesn't make the top three it would be a disaster," said editor-at-large Burfoot, who won the Boston Marathon 40 years ago.

Boston, the world's oldest annually contested marathon, may also be an Olympic trial for Kenya's top runners.