Samuel Wanjiru broke an Olympic record older than he is, and in doing so accomplished something no one from the great running nation of Kenya had—win an Olympic marathon.

The 21-year-old raced away from the field in the final stages Sunday, finishing in an Olympic record time of 2 hours, 6 minutes, 32 seconds. That trimmed nearly three minutes off a mark that had stood for 24 years.

Coming in, this was a race defined more for who wasn’t running—world record-holder Haile Gebrselassie opted out based on worries about air pollution, which turned out not to be an issue following overnight rain. Now the race will be remembered as Wanjiru’s breakthrough moment.

Watch out, Haile, your mark might be next.

“My target is to break the world record,” Wanjiru said of Gebrselassie’s 2:04.26 time.

This from a runner who had just completed only his third marathon.

He won by powering away from silver medalist Jaouad Gharib of Morocco, a two-time world champion, beating him by 44 seconds. Ethiopian Tsegay Kebede took the bronze in 2:10:00.

Wanjiru’s strategy was simple—push, push, push the pace through the 26.2-mile race.

Expect America’s multi-millionaire National Basketball Association heroes to continue sacrificing their summers in quest of Olympic gold, even after returning the United States to global supremacy.

Smiles were still locked on the faces of the US NBA superstars after their 118-107 triumph over Spain in Sunday’s gold medal game when USA Basketball general manager Jerry Colangelo said half of them were ready to return in 2012.

“We’ll celebrate and then we will talk about going forward,” Colangelo said. “Five or six of these guys have said they want to be part of us going forward. But now it’s time for a rest.”

“Hell yeah,” answered US forward Carmelo Anthony. “I’ve been doing this for 40 years.”

Anthony, only 24, joined LeBron James and Dwyane Wade as seldom-seen reserves on the 2004 US team that settled for Olympic bronze. Their quest to redeem US honor and restore the once-mighty dynasty drove the US march to gold.

Forward Donyell Marshall won’t be making the move to Oklahoma City with the Seattle SuperSonics.

The 14-year NBA veteran was waived Wednesday by the Oklahoma City franchise, which still hasn’t been renamed after its relocation last month.

Marshall was acquired by the franchise from Cleveland in a three-team trade in February that sent Wally Szczerbiak and Ben Wallace to the Cavaliers.

He averaged 3.8 points off the bench in 15 games with Seattle and was sidelined by a sore right knee late last season.

Adrian Griffin, who was the other player sent to Seattle in that trade, was shipped to Milwaukee last week as part of a deal that brought forwards Desmond Mason and Joe Smith to Oklahoma City.

The NHL refuses to entertain compensation offers from a newly formed Russian hockey league for the signing of forward Alex Radulov while the player was under contract with the Nashville Predators.

And until Radulov’s contract with the Predators is honored, the NHL won’t consider negotiating a player transfer agreement with the Continental Hockey League (KHL), NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly told The Associated Press in an e-mail on Monday.

“The bottom line from our perspective is that the player has a contract which our rules obligate him to respect,” Daly said. “Our rules don’t recognize a player (or his new team) being able to ‘buy’ the way out of an existing contract. It’s not a scenario that our existing rules contemplate or allow.”

Radulov is at the center of a controversy between the NHL and the KHL after the player signed with KHL’s Ufa last month.