Anchorage Daily News

SEWARD -- In a finish as bizarre as it was surreal, Matias Saari of Fairbanks won the men's Mount Marathon race today after race leader Brent Knight collapsed within sight of the finish line on a hot afternoon.

With just one long city block separating him from glory, Knight fell to his knees, crawled, then rolled down the incline of the street before coming to a halt and being treated by aid workers. Knight was removed from the course.

"I've never seen anything so horrifying in this race,'' said women's champion Cedar Bourgeois, who was at the stop where Knight collapsed.

Saari, 38 and a sports reporter for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, soon passed Knight and stopped. Saari said he was dazed and thought Knight had collapsed after crossing the finish line.

As fans yelled for him to continue running, Saari ran for a short stretch and stopped again -- he was at the start line, but thought it was the finish line. Finally, he ran the 100-200 meters to the finish and was clocked in an unofficial time of 48 minutes, 1 second for the 82nd edition of the race up and down the 3,022-foot mountain.

"I was kind of in a haze on the road,'' Saari said. "I felt like I was just crawling.'' The victory was the first at Mount Marathon for Saari, who finished seventh in his 2007 debut and third last year.

Eric Strabel finished second in 48:30, Clint McCool returned from a one-year hiatus to take third in 48:47 and defending champion Trond Flagstad finished fourth in 49:41.

Six-time champ Brad Precosky finished fifth in 50:01.

Strabel said he was concerned for his friend Knight. " I feel so bad,'' he said. "He tries so hard. 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.''

Sam Hill led the race to the top of the peak before fading. Saari was more than three minutes behind Hill when he summited. "It's hard to convince yourself you can win when you're three minutes down with 12 minutes to go,'' Saari said.

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