Tola continued to be one of the sport's great late bloomers, a 32-year-old runner has become especially good at excelling in warmer conditions.
On Saturday morning, he captured another of the sport's ultimate prizes, and he did it running with the kind of aggressive style befitting a runner on a serious hot streak.
After letting the little-known Eyob Faniel of Italy lead for most of the first half of the race, Tola made his first move just before the halfway mark.
In a society that reveres its distance runners, Tola's name will now be uttered in the same sentences as Abebe Bikila, the first East African to win the Olympic marathon when he covered the distance without shoes in Rome in 1960.
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