RSU medical student Jaakko Nieminen wins the Tet Riga marathon 10 km race!

Jaakko Nieminen, a medical student from Finland and part of the Rīga Stradiņš University (RSU) team, achieved the best results at the Tet Riga Marathon which was held on 19 May this year. He crossed the finish line of the 10 km race first with a result of 32 minutes and 28 seconds. This is the best achievement of the RSU team to date. Nieminen did, however, also achieve the best results from the RSU team in 2017 and 2018 by coming in second in the same race. This year RSU was represented at the marathon by 205 participants from almost 20 countries and was among the largest and most international teams.

RSU medical student Jaakko Nieminen on the winner’s podium.

The second best performance by an RSU team member was by Luca Sanwald who came 59th finishing with a time of 1:25:14 in the 21 km run. The highest ranking in the 6 km run from the RSU team was Abasin Slemankhil who finished with a time of 0:28:18 and came in 106th place. Ten RSU team members competed in the full 42 km long marathon, and the best result was achieved by Carl Fredrik Nils Lindblom who came 223rd with a time of 3:26:18. A total of 2 050 km was run by all 205 RSU team representatives. This year the 10 km race attracted the largest group of runners from the RSU team with 86 participants, while the 21km race was chosen by 68 runners representing RSU.

In total the Tet Riga Marathon had a record number of participants – 38 398 runners representing 82 countries.

For the first time this year the marathon was awarded the Road Race Gold Label by the International Association of Athletics Federation's (IAAF) after the federation assessed the track, infrastructure, participant safety, availability of medical services and other indicators. The Riga Marathon is the only marathon in Northern Europe to hold the Gold Label.