Tusse's Margin of Victory 7th Largest

The men's race at the Chevron Houston Marathon over the last 35 years has typically been fairly close.

The last four years, the margin of victory has been less than a minute.

This year, though, Ethiopia's Feyisa Tusse posted the seventh largest margin of victory with his two-minute and 17-second win over Russia's Mikhail Khobotov.

The top seven margins of victory are as follows:

8:30 - 1976 - Jeff Wells over Rice teammate John Lodwick
8:29 - 2001 - Christopher Ciamarra over Orange, Texas native James Lawrence
5:49 - 1978 - Ron Tabb over David Odom
3:00 - 1973 - Juan Garza over Austin's Dennis Manske
2:48 - 1993 - Frank Bjorkli over Sean Wade
2:29 - 2000 - Stephen Ndungu over Sammy Maritim
2:17 - 2007 - Feyisa Tusse over Mikhail Khobotov

Conversely, the women's edition of the marathon has typically been a rout.

Only eight (8) women's margins of victory have been less than a minute with the closest being the 1980 finish where Vanessa Vajdos outsprinted training partner Donna Burge to the finish line and defeated her by a second.

The eight closest finishes in the women's marathon are as follows:

0:01 - 1980 - Vanessa Vajdos over Donna Burge
0:04 - 1981 - Patti Lyons Catalano over Laurie Binder
0:09 - 1983 - Ingrid Kristiansen over Laurie Binder
0:22 - 1994 - Alevtina Noaumova over Tatiana Pozdnyajkova
0:30 - 1996 - Adriana Fernandez over Loma Guadalupe
0:31 - 2006 - Firaya Sultanova-Zhdanova over Nicole Stevenson
0:43 - 2001 - Tatiana Pozdnyakova over Zinaida Semenova
0:56 - 1985 - Silvia Ruegger over Jacqueline Gareau