Great Britain’s Emile Cairess finished strongly to claim an impressive fourth-place finish in a men’s marathon won by Ethiopia’s Tamirat Tola in an Olympic record.

Tola took the title in a time of two hours six minutes and 26 seconds, winning his country’s first gold of the Games.

Belgian Bashir Abdi took the silver in 2:06.47 with the bronze going to Kenyan Benson Kipruto in 2:07.00.

Cairess, who qualified for the Paris Olympics after finishing third in the London Marathon in April, took fourth in 2:07.29.

Cairess’ Team GB team-mates Phil Sesemann and Mahamed Mahamed finished 46th and 57th respectively.

Eliud Kipchoge was targeting an unprecedented third straight Olympic title but the Kenyan was unable to finish the race.

Tola, a bronze medallist in the 10,000m at Rio 2016, said: “I am happy because I fulfilled my goal. I prepared well. I trained hard so I could win. In my life, this is my great achievement.”

Tola, who won the New York City marathon in a course record time last year, was not originally in the Ethiopian Olympic squad and was only drafted in when Sisay Lemma pulled out due to a hamstring injury.

Tola added: “I was fully prepared and knew I could fulfil my dream. I am happy to do that. This is the Olympics and it is not easy to win the Olympic Games, not at all. I am very proud, very happy.”

Cairess sat in second spot after 30km before dropping back but he overtook Ethiopia’s Deresa Geleta and Akira Akasaki to finish fourth.

“I’m really proud of myself,” Cairess said. “I didn’t really care where I came, it was more about doing my best race and feeling like I’ve fulfilled my potential. I can’t control how fit all the other guys are.

“I feel like I ran the best I could have. In both London marathons I ran, I didn’t finish the best but this year I was a bit more conservative. This is the first time I’ve run a real race in the last 2km so I wanted to prove I could finish it off.

“It is the best run I’ve had by a decent bit. I just wanted to give myself a chance. That was my thinking, just try to run as fast as I could until the end.

“Maybe one of them would blow up and I could catch them, but it just so happened that three of them didn’t blow up.”

On the future, Cairess added: “I’ll try to train more, be consistent and not put pressure on myself to do anything else. Just try and improve in training and see what I can do the next time.”

Cairess dedicated his third-place finish at the London Marathon in April to his 22-year-old cousin Oliver Burton, who was left in a coma after a car crash earlier this year.

Cairess added: “My cousin has done fantastically. He’s doing really well. He is able to come out of hospital on the weekends now. He’s walking a little, he’s mentally sound. It couldn’t have gone any better.

“It (the accident) was really bad. It was touch and go. It wasn’t a small thing. He was in a coma for six or seven weeks – it was well bad.

“In London (before running marathon) it was really difficult in the morning and the build-up, I was really emotional. That’s been a big difference. The build-up to Paris was way less emotionally charged, more normal. That helped me compared with London.”