A look back at Tekoa native Susannah Scaroni’s record-breaking finish at New York Marathon

New York Times

Defending Bloomsday champion Susannah Scaroni didn’t just win her first New York Marathon women’s wheelchair title on Sunday.

The Tekoa, Washington, native did it in record fashion.

Finishing in 1 hour, 42 minutes and 43 seconds, Scaroni set a course mark by 21 seconds, breaking Tatyana McFadden’s record set in 2015.

Scaroni received $25,000 for coming in first, and another $50,000 for setting course records.

Scaroni’s victory came after she won her first major marathon race in Chicago last month. On Sunday, she built up an early lead and was never challenged. By the halfway point, Scaroni led by nearly 3 minutes over Manuela Schar of Switzerland and Madison De Rozario of Australia, who won the event last year.

Scaroni’s victory completed a yearlong comeback after she was hit by a car last September while training. She returned to training in the spring this year and steadily recovered her strength.

“I couldn’t have asked to be back as strong as I am right now, but every day I love what I do,” Scaroni said.

Scaroni, 31, has been on the podium 15 times in World Marathon Majors races, and now has won two of them.

A month after winning two medals in the Tokyo Paralympic Games last year, she collided with a car on the roads in Illinois and fractured a vertebrae. In June, in her first race back, she won the Mini 10K in a world-record time, then broke the 5,000-meter world record on the track.

Scaroni, who grew up in Tekoa and attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, finished third in the New York City Marathon in 2019.