[2] Tiki Gelana from Ethiopia won the gold medal, completing the course in an Olympic record-breaking time of 2 hours 23 minutes 7 seconds.

Kenya's Priscah Jeptoo finished second to win silver and Tatyana Petrova Arkhipova, representing Russia, took bronze.

The pack slowly whittled itself down by 12 km; the ever-present Valeria Straneo emerged to take the point position on the front.

Over the next several kilometres, as the rain subsided, Xiaolin Zhu emerged as Straneo's shadow through the half marathon mark in 1:13:13.

Meanwhile, the significantly less experienced Tatyana Petrova Arkhipova worked her way from far off the pace, past the rest of the athletes who had fallen out of the pack.