About two hours after Dublin Marathon participants started their 42.2km journey from Leeson Street Lower, wheelchairs were brought to the finish line as a precaution, alongside a stretcher flanked by medical staff.
Amid the chaos at the finish line, staff frantically urged those waiting just beyond the crossing on Mount Street Upper to move back to make way for the runners about to arrive.
Within minutes, American Daniel Mesfin jolted past the finish line. He proceeded to wobble and became the first of countless participants to vomit after achieving their goal.
Soon after, he he said he had achieved his personal best time (2:08.51), despite the weather being “very windy” and “cold”.
RM Block
The remaining participants of the 44th Irish Life Dublin Marathon, in which a record-breaking 18,486 crossed the finish line, came in thick and fast after that point.
Medical personnel whizzed the wheelchairs around in unison, catching people as they slowly buckled. At one point, a woman was wheeling a runner off to the side before having to let go to catch another man as he fell on to nearby fencing.
“It’s carnage,” one staff member could be heard telling another.
In the middle of the chaos, and within seconds of crossing the finish line, Berta Quiñonero unfurled her sleeve and detached a ring from a bracelet on her wrist.
She proceeded to collect her medal calmly with the ring in her hand, before spotting her partner, Kahumburuka Tuahuku, a 31-year-old originally from Makunda, Botswana, waiting for her.
Having finished the marathon about an hour or so earlier, he smiled on seeing her emerge from the crowd of participants.
On reaching him, Quiñonero, a 27-year-old originally from Barcelona, Spain, got down on one knee and proposed. He said yes.
“Honestly, I stopped caring about the race halfway through. I just wanted to get to the finish line,” she said.
“I was just worried I was not going to make it because I was struggling.”
She denied being nervous in the lead-up to the proposal, saying: “I had 42 kilometres to think about it.”
Tuahuku, meanwhile, now wearing a ring on his finger, said he was “speechless” but “happy”.
Quiñonero first met her now-fiance in 2023 through the Sanctuary Runners, a group that aims to bring asylum seekers, migrants and members of the wider Irish public together through sport.
The couple’s journeys to Ireland “couldn’t have been more different”, she said, as an EU citizen.
Tuahuku sought international protection in Ireland over safety concerns, and faced a “long, stressful, and uncertain” asylum process, Quiñonero said.
“Kahumburuka never gave up on his case,” she said, adding: “He chose to secure his protection on his own terms, with hope and patience. And he did.”
In the background, men and women in visible pain held each other up as they hobbled, while one woman cried silently as she walked alone to collect her medal.
One runner shouted “I f***ing did it” on reaching the finish line, grabbing and hugging a volunteer unknown to him, while babies were pushed to the railings to receive kisses from their exhausted mothers.
Dearbhla O’Moore, a 25-year-old originally from Ballyshannon, Co Donegal, burst into tears seconds after crossing the finish line just before 12.30pm.
She was hit by a car in Mount Merrion about five years ago while out running – and had just a short while earlier passed the site where it happened.
“I was told I would never run again,” she said, showing her emotion, adding: “There are no words.”
“When I had my accident, running was like my identity,” O’Moore said, adding that her parents “got me through it”.
Her father, who died two years ago, inspired and motivated her in the aftermath. “I did it for my dad.”
Nearby, crowds filled footpaths and steps and hung off railings in the hope of catching a glimpse of a loved one as they finally reached the finish line. Young children sitting on the shoulders of their parents rang bells which had been handed out.
On surrounding streets, people hoping to enter the city centre on foot for non-marathon related reasons remonstrated with staff who had refused them entry.
“Nobody’s letting me go anywhere,” said a frustrated woman carrying an umbrella on its last legs.
On Mount Street Upper, a woman cyclist attempted to push her way through a cordoned-off area, telling security staff that she had been “stopped everywhere else”, as others simply barged past the distracted security.
Hours later, friends and family still lined the streets of the city centre in the rain, shivering, as they waited for their loved ones to reach them.
Among them was a woman who saw her son emerge from the crowds before she shouted his name several times. He slowly made his way to the fence before he was pulled to his mother, who kissed his cheek several times through the metal as he cried.
