# Athletics at the 1992 Summer Olympics – Men's marathon

The men's marathon at the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, Spain, was held on Sunday August 9, 1992. The race started at 18:30h local time. One hundred and ten athletes from 72 nations started; 87 athletes completed the race, with Pyambuugiin Tuul from Mongolia finishing in last position in 4:00:44 (the first Olympic marathon runner to finish over 4 hours since 1908). The maximum number of athletes per nation had been set at 3 since the 1930 Olympic Congress. The event was won by Hwang Young-Cho of South Korea, the nation's first Olympic men's marathon medal. Koichi Morishita's silver was Japan's first medal in the event since 1968. Stephan Freigang of Germany took bronze, the first medal for Germany in the event though East Germany had won two golds (both by Waldemar Cierpinski) during partition.

## Background

This was the 22nd appearance of the event, which is one of 12 athletics events to have been held at every Summer Olympics. Returning runners from the 1988 marathon included seven of the top eight finishers: gold medalist Gelindo Bordin of Italy, silver medalist Douglas Wakiihuri of Kenya, bronze medalist Hussein Ahmed Salah of Djibouti, fourth-place finisher Takeyuki Nakayama of Japan, fifth-place finisher Steve Moneghetti and eighth-place finisher Robert de Castella of Australia, and seventh-place finisher Juma Ikangaa of Tanzania. The world record holder, Belayneh Dinsamo of Ethiopia, did not enter; the 1991 World champion, Hiromi Taniguchi of Japan, did. The field was "very wide open as nobody had dominated the event in the preceding years."
Aruba, Bahrain, Cameroon, Liechtenstein, Mauritania, Mongolia, Namibia, San Marino, Slovenia, and Syria each made their first appearance in Olympic men's marathons; some former Soviet republics appeared as the Unified Team in the team's only Summer Games. The United States made its 21st appearance, most of any nation, having missed only the boycotted 1980 Games.

## Competition format and course

As all Olympic marathons, the competition was a single race. The marathon distance of 26 miles, 385 yards was run over a point-to-point route starting at Mataró and finishing at the Olympic Stadium. The course ran along the Catalan coast, finishing with a "brutal" climb of 150 metres up Montjuïc to the stadium. Because of the timing of the race so close to the closing ceremony, an alternate finish line outside the stadium was used for runners finishing in over 2 hours and 45 minutes.

## Records

These were the standing world and Olympic records prior to the 1992 Summer Olympics.
| World record | Belayneh Dinsamo (ETH) | 2:06:50 | Rotterdam, Netherlands | 17 April 1988 |
| Olympic record | Carlos Lopes (POR) | 2:09:21 | Los Angeles, United States | 12 August July 1984 |
No new world or Olympic bests were set during the competition.

## Schedule

It was a hot day, 27 °C (81 °F), somewhat mitigated by the late start at 6:30 p.m. The schedule put the top finishers in the stadium just before the closing ceremony started, but slower runners could not finish in the stadium due to the ceremony.
All times are Central European Summer Time (UTC+2)
| Date | Time | Round |
| Sunday, 9 August 1992 | 18:30 | Final |

## Results

| Rank | Athlete | Nation | Time |
| | Hwang Young-Cho | South Korea | 2:13:23 |
| | Kōichi Morishita | Japan | 2:13:45 |
| | Stephan Freigang | Germany | 2:14:00 |
| 4 | Takeyuki Nakayama | Japan | 2:14:02 |
| 5 | Salvatore Bettiol | Italy | 2:14:15 |
| 6 | Salah Kokaich | Morocco | 2:14:25 |
| 7 | Jan Huruk | Poland | 2:14:32 |
| 8 | Hiromi Taniguchi | Japan | 2:14:42 |
| 9 | Diego García | Spain | 2:14:56 |
| 10 | Kim Jae-Ryong | South Korea | 2:15:01 |
| 11 | Harri Hänninen | Finland | 2:15:19 |
| 12 | Steve Spence | United States | 2:15:21 |
| 13 | Ed Eyestone | United States | 2:15:23 |
| 14 | Boniface Merande | Kenya | 2:15:46 |
| 15 | Bert van Vlaanderen | Netherlands | 2:15:47 |
| 16 | Rex Wilson | New Zealand | 2:15:51 |
| 17 | Bob Kempainen | United States | 2:15:53 |
| 18 | Rodrigo Gavela | Spain | 2:16:23 |
| 19 | Karel David | Czechoslovakia | 2:16:34 |
| 20 | Leszek Beblo | Poland | 2:16:38 |
| 21 | Wiesław Perszke | Poland | 2:16:38 |
| 22 | Yakov Tolstikov | Unified Team | 2:17:04 |
| 23 | Tena Negere | Ethiopia | 2:17:07 |
| 24 | Osmiro Silva | Brazil | 2:17:16 |
| 25 | Abel Mokibe | South Africa | 2:17:24 |
| 26 | Robert de Castella | Australia | 2:17:44 |
| 27 | Steve Brace | Great Britain | 2:17:49 |
| 28 | Kim Wan-gi | South Korea | 2:18:32 |
| 29 | Isidro Rico | Mexico | 2:18:52 |
| 30 | Hussein Ahmed Salah | Djibouti | 2:19:04 |
| 31 | Dominique Chauvelier | France | 2:19:09 |
| 32 | José Montiel | Spain | 2:19:15 |
| 33 | Thabiso Moqhali | Lesotho | 2:19:28 |
| 34 | Juma Ikangaa | Tanzania | 2:19:34 |
| 35 | Derek Froude | New Zealand | 2:19:37 |
| 36 | Douglas Wakiihuri | Kenya | 2:19:38 |
| 37 | Ibrahim Hussein | Kenya | 2:19:49 |
| 38 | Gyula Borka | Hungary | 2:20:46 |
| 39 | Dave Long | Great Britain | 2:20:51 |
| 40 | Mirko Vindiš | Slovenia | 2:21:03 |
| 41 | Paul Davies-Hale | Great Britain | 2:21:15 |
| 42 | Elphas Ginindza | Swaziland | 2:21:15 |
| 43 | Rolando Vera | Ecuador | 2:21:30 |
| 44 | Alessio Faustini | Italy | 2:21:37 |
| 45 | Luis Soares | France | 2:21:57 |
| 46 | Paul Kuété | Cameroon | 2:22:43 |
| 47 | Helmut Schmuck | Austria | 2:23:38 |
| 48 | Steve Moneghetti | Australia | 2:23:42 |
| 49 | Konrad Dobler | Germany | 2:23:44 |
| 50 | Ralombo Mwenze | Zaire | 2:23:47 |
| 51 | John Treacy | Ireland | 2:24:11 |
| 52 | Herman Suizo | Philippines | 2:25:18 |
| 53 | Peter Reynierse | Aruba | 2:25:31 |
| 54 | Nelson Zamora | Uruguay | 2:25:32 |
| 55 | Daniel Böltz | Switzerland | 2:25:50 |
| 56 | Joseildo da Silva | Brazil | 2:26:00 |
| 57 | Juan Camacho | Bolivia | 2:26:01 |
| 58 | Cephas Matafi | Zimbabwe | 2:26:17 |
| 59 | Mohamed Selmi | Algeria | 2:26:56 |
| 60 | Ildephonse Sehirwa | Rwanda | 2:27:44 |
| 61 | Zerehune Gizaw | Ethiopia | 2:28:25 |
| 62 | Jaime Ojeda | Chile | 2:28:39 |
| 63 | Smartex Tambala | Malawi | 2:29:02 |
| 64 | Pascal Zilliox | France | 2:30:02 |
| 65 | Luis López | Costa Rica | 2:30:26 |
| 66 | Gian Luigi Macina | San Marino | 2:30:45 |
| 67 | Abdou Manzo | Niger | 2:31:15 |
| 68 | Roland Willie | Liechtenstein | 2:31:32 |
| 69 | Frank Kayele | Namibia | 2:31:41 |
| 70 | Hari Bahadur Rokaya | Nepal | 2:32:26 |
| 71 | Kuruppu Karunaratne | Sri Lanka | 2:32:26 |
| 72 | Tommy Hughes | Ireland | 2:32:55 |
| 73 | William Aguirre | Nicaragua | 2:34:18 |
| 74 | Ferdinand Amadi | Central African Republic | 2:35:39 |
| 75 | Mohamed Khamis Taher | Libya | 2:35:46 |
| 76 | Dieudonné LaMothe | Haiti | 2:36:11 |
| 77 | Myint Kan | Myanmar | 2:37:39 |
| 78 | Calvin Dallas | Virgin Islands | 2:38:11 |
| 79 | Saad Mubarak Ali | Bahrain | 2:39:19 |
| 80 | Ryu Ok-hyon | North Korea | 2:40:51 |
| 81 | Alain Razahasoa | Madagascar | 2:41:41 |
| 82 | Michael Lopeyok | Uganda | 2:42:54 |
| 83 | Benjamin Keleketu | Botswana | 2:45:57 |
| 84 | Moussa El-Hariri | Syria | 2:47:06 |
| 85 | Lưu Văn Hùng | Vietnam | 2:56:42 |
| 86 | Hussein Haleem | Maldives | 3:04:16 |
| 87 | Pyambuugiin Tuul | Mongolia | 4:00:44 |
| — | Apolinario Belisle | Honduras | DNF |
| — | Abebe Mekonnen | Ethiopia | DNF |
| — | Bineshwar Prasad | Fiji | DNF |
| — | Peter Maher | Canada | DNF |
| — | Diamantino dos Santos | Brazil | DNF |
| — | Luketz Swartbooi | Namibia | DNF |
| — | John Burra | Tanzania | DNF |
| — | Dionicio Cerón | Mexico | DNF |
| — | Jorge González | Puerto Rico | DNF |
| — | António Pinto Coelho | Portugal | DNF |
| — | Gelindo Bordin | Italy | DNF |
| — | Carlos Grisales | Colombia | DNF |
| — | Alberto Cuba | Cuba | DNF |
| — | Talal Omar Abdillahi | Djibouti | DNF |
| — | Csaba Szűcs | Hungary | DNF |
| — | Andy Ronan | Ireland | DNF |
| — | Mohamed Ould Khalifa | Mauritania | DNF |
| — | Tonnie Dirks | Netherlands | DNF |
| — | Dionísio Castro | Portugal | DNF |
| — | Joaquim Pinheiro | Portugal | DNF |
| — | Jan Tau | South Africa | DNF |
| — | Zithulele Sinqe | South Africa | DNF |
| — | Simon Robert Naali | Tanzania | DNF |
| — | Vladimir Bukhanov | Unified Team | DNS |
| — | Salvador García | Mexico | DNS |