NEW YORK (AA) – One million dollars were spent on security for this year's New York City marathon on Sunday, double the amount of the previous year.
1,500 security cameras watched the vicinity of the 26.2 mile route alongside an unspecified number of NY Police Department (NYPD) officers in uniform and civilian attire equipped with radiation detection gear.
Security was center stage this year, following the explosions at the Boston Marathon last April which killed three people and wounded more than 260 others. New York City police commissioner Ray Kelly referred to it as the “most protected race a runner can enter.”
Measures also included 43 bomb-sniffing dogs, an unspecified number of scuba divers along bridges over the East River, police helicopters and boats.
Meanwhile, two Kenyans won the New York City Marathon, marking the third time Kenyans have won both the men's and women's races.
Geoffrey Mutai won the men’s contest after finishing in 2 hours, 8 minutes and 24 seconds. It was his second win in a row since he won in 2011 and last year's marathon was postponed due to hurricane Sandy.
In the women's contest, Kenyan Priscah Jeptoo won after finishing in 2:25:07.
The winners won half a million dollars each.
Among the runners, Bosnian-American Vedad Osmanovic ran with a T-shirt which had "1995 Srebrenica Genocide” written above his official New York Marathon number.
“We wanted to remind the world one more time, and New York is the stage for that, of what happened in Srebrenica, what kind of crime against humanity happened there – and it is the world's obligation to remember it,” Vedad’s father Dr. Ismet Osmanovic, a pediatrician from Banja Luka, told AA.
More than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were killed in Srebrenica in July 1995 by the Bosnian Serb army over the course of only a few days. It was the worst episode of mass murder within Europe since the Holocaust crimes against European Jews some 50 years before.
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