SEWARD -- At the Robert Spurr Memorial Hill Climb on Bird Ridge near Anchorage two weeks ago, Matias Saari of Fairbanks finished a dispiriting 17th. He drove away from that race unsure whether to chalk up his misery to a bad day, overtraining or workouts on a relatively puny hill back home.
"All of the above?'' he said. "I just tried to forget about it. I knew I was in better shape than that.''
Saturday, Saari offered proof, coming from far behind to win the 82nd edition of storied Mount Marathon in a finish that was as bizarre as it was surreal.
Saari, a 38-year-old sports reporter at the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner running the race on the 3,022-foot beast for just the third time, joined a list of champions in Alaska's most prestigious footrace that includes Olympians and mountain-running legends.
Before celebrating, Saari endured the final stretch down the road in town after race leader Brent Knight collapsed about 220 meters from the finish line on Fourth Avenue and did not finish.
The former Equinox Marathon champion was clocked in 48 minutes flat on a hot day that was postcard perfect for spectators but punished racers and slowed times.
"I'm still new to this game,'' Saari said of mountain racing. "It's hard to believe I could win.''
Former junior Mount Marathon champion Eric Strabel, 27, of Anchorage, crossed in 48:29 to earn runner-up honors for the third time. Clint McCool, 45, of Anchorage, returning to the race after a one-year hiatus to heal a bum knee, snagged a personal-best third place in 48:47.
Defending champion Trond Flagstad, 39, of Anchorage, took fourth in 49:41, and six-time champion Brad Precosky, 42, of Anchorage, captured fifth in 50:01.
Saari, a self-described "flatlander,'' is believed to be the first runner from Fairbanks to win the nation's third-oldest footrace. That he prevailed was testament to his perseverance.
After all, when he topped the summit, he was more than three minutes behind race leader Sam Hill, who led the field to the peak for the third straight year.
"It's hard to convince yourself you can win when you're three minutes down with 12 minutes to go,'' Saari said.
But Hill, an uphill demon but a relatively slow downhill runner, quickly faded, finishing 18th in 53:45. Like Knight, also ahead of Saari at the peak, he too apparently melted down from heat exhaustion.
Saari survived.
"I was kind of in a daze on the road,'' Saari said. "I felt like I was just crawling.''
He meant that figuratively. Knight suffered that fate literally.
Knight, 25, of Anchorage, fell to the pavement as he was making the turn onto Fourth Avenue when someone shooting a photograph clipped him, knocking Knight to the ground.
"I was running a super-fine line," Knight said later Saturday night after being released from the hospital. "When I got to base of the mountain, I was really dehydrated and thought, 'Holy crap, I'm really tired.'
"Then the collision happened. That basically broke the fine line, and I got really wobbly."
He struggled for another block and went down again.
"I was trying to crawl, and I blanked out and woke up in the hospital," he said.
Saari soon arrived on the scene and was also in a bit of a mental and physical fog from effort and exhaustion. He stopped because he thought Knight had finished and then collapsed, leaving Saari the runner-up.
"I stepped around him and stopped,'' Saari said. "People were yelling, 'Go! Go! Go!' I totally thought I had second place.''
Saari began running again but soon stopped again. This time he thought he was at the finish line, and then he realized it was the start line. He started running yet again -- "I just wanted to be done,'' Saari said -- and finally crossed before dropping to the pavement and pouring bottled water over his head as he gasped for breath.
He had won the race in his third bid after finishing seventh in 2007 and third last year.
"In for life,'' Saari said with a grin, noting that race champions automatically qualify for the limited-entry event.
Knight, meanwhile, was unconscious in the hospital for four hours.
"When I woke up, the only thing I could feel was that I was breathing and my heart was beating."
While Knight suffered tragedy, others triumphed.
McCool, who underwent surgery on his left knee four times from 1995-97, was stunned by his third-place finish, especially after skipping the race last year to rest his knee.
"I was shocked,'' he said. "I was hoping for maybe eighth, ninth, 10th -- just get back in the top 10.''
Like the other runners, McCool hoped Knight would quickly recover.
"I hope he's OK, because he smoked us -- he doesn't deserve that,'' McCool said.
Strabel said Knight's faltering was indicative of his competitiveness -- he'll run until he drops.
"He tries so hard,'' Strabel said. "No one hurts more than he does in a race. He gives it his all, to a fault.
"His time will come. He will be at the top, and more than once. As far as I'm concerned, I was third place today.''
Find Doyle Woody's blog at adn.com/hockeyblog or call him at 257-4335.
By DOYLE WOODY
dwoody@adn.com