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Defending Mount Marathon champion Trond Flagstad was never even close to his friend and former pupil.

The University of Alaska Anchorage ski coach watched Saturday afternoon as Brent Knight whizzed to the front of the pack on the way up before breezing past him during his descent of the daunting 3,022-foot peak -- while Flagstad was still heading up.

"I thought he was going to win for sure," Flagstad said.

Matias Saari took it one step further.

Believing Knight had already won the 82nd running of the grueling 3.1-mile race in Seward, Saari stopped dead in his tracks when he saw Knight lying on the scorching Fourth Avenue pavement.

Only it wasn't the finish line. They were still roughly 200 yards away.

Knight, a 2002 graduate of Soldotna High School, battled Nikiski graduate Sam Hill up the mountain before gaining control with a rapid descent. When it seemed like his first victory was within grasp, only a block-and-a-half away, Knight succumbed to the extraordinary heat, collapsing to the ground and never rising again in allowing Saari to hop over him and bolt to the actual finish line for his first-ever win.

Saari, racing for the third time, clocked in unofficially at 48 minutes, 1 second, while Eric Strabel finished second in 48:30, Clint McCool placed third in 48:47 and Flagstad took fourth in 49:41.

Rather than talk of Saari's surprising victory, most discussion following the race centered around Knight's lost opportunity.

"I feel bad for him because he smoked us all. He destroyed us getting to the top and had a great race," McCool said. "He was so far ahead, I didn't even see him collapse and I was just two places back. I just feel bad for him.

"You're 75 yards from the finish line, that's heartbreaking."

Saari, who took fifth two years ago and third last year, was elated with his unusual victory, yet called it bittersweet at the same time.

"I'd rather win being the strongest guy start to finish, and Brent was the strongest guy until the last 100 yards," he said. "And it's unfortunate he couldn't get there.

"There's a guy collapsed a quarter-mile or a couple hundred yards from the finish, that doesn't happen every day," Saari added. "Brent's a friend of mine. I just hope he was OK."

Knight, 25, was taken to the hospital and was unavailable as of Saturday night. He did not finish the race.

On an uncharacteristically warm day by the waterfront town's standards, with temperatures pushing the low seventies, heat exhaustion was just another challenge in an already formidable event.

"Today it wasn't about who had the fastest time," McCool said. "It was about who could keep their head together and keep going.

"Clearly the heat was really getting to people," he added. "On the way up even, usually we're all very encouraging, we're talking to each other, we're slapping each other on the back. And today everybody was just saving their breath."

Hill and Knight led most of the way, with Hill owning about a 20-second edge as the pair summitted around 3:35 p.m. with the sun splashing down upon them. Knight then passed Hill, who finished second last year, on the way down and was first out of the chute, where he reportedly hit the ground.

The first one to round the corner onto Fourth Avenue, Knight was poised to capture victory, easily besting his sixth-place finish from a year ago.

That's where things took an awkward turn.

As the public address announcer was bringing Knight home between the throngs of people lining the street, he fell to the ground within sight of the finish line, anywhere from 100 to 200 yards away, and never got back to his feet.

Saari, thinking the race was over when he approached Knight, also stopped.

"It was just bizarre," said Saari, from Fairbanks. "Brent went down with a quarter-mile from the finish. I thought he had finished. I thought he was first and had collapsed at the finish line. And I stopped there thinking I was second, hoping he was OK.

"You're borderline heat stroke at that point," he added. "You just want to be done. He was done and I guess I wanted to be, too."

Neither were.

Realizing the race wasn't over, Saari continued on, stopping again near the starting line.

Still not there.

"You're not thinking really clearly. I didn't realize there wasn't a clock there and I thought that was the finish line," he said. "Then people are screaming at me and I finally realized and then got to here.

"I didn't know for sure I was in first until I crossed the finish line."

Saari, climbing the mountain aggressively but not recklessly, said he was told he was three minutes behind when he reached the peak, at that point thinking he had a chance to pass Hill on the way down, but catching Knight wouldn't be easy.

"But realistically, it's hard to convince yourself you can win when you're three minutes back," said Saari, who finished to 5:26 behind Knight's winning time in the Robert Spurr Memorial Hill Climb up Bird Ridge on June 21. "I'm elated. I've gotten to know a lot of these guys well. ... I feel part of the Anchorage mountain-running community.

"Coming from Fairbanks, it was a new challenge to me to start this up three, four years ago, and I'm hooked for sure."

With Knight unavailable for comment, McCool hypothesized what may have gone awry.

"I have a hard time truly understanding it. If I was at his place, I would have looked behind me and there was nobody within sight. I don't know why he didn't ease back a little bit," he said. "I think maybe in his own mind, he was finally going to win this race. He's tried to win it a bunch of times and I think in his own mind, he was going for his fastest as he could go.

"He was so far ahead of us at the top and he's a pretty strong downhiller normally. He's a very strong road-runner, so you don't normally expect anyone to catch him," McCool added. "But I think he was pushing. I don't know why he was pushing so hard. He had the race obviously won. But maybe in his own mind he had to push it all the way to the end. But I feel bad for him."

Nearly everyone did.

"He deserves so much to win. Twice now he has had it," Flagstad said, referencing a setback in a previous Fourth of July race when Knight lost his way on the mountain and finished third. "I was rooting for him."

Six-time winner Brad Precosky, who finished fifth, said he was told at the top he was five minutes, 30 seconds, back of the pace and wasn't pleased.

"At that point I just said I'm going to run my race, see what I can do and be safe on the way down," the 42-year-old said. "It was even dusty coming down. You'd see a guy up in front of you and you couldn't see your footsteps because there's someone's dust in your face.

"The dust, you'd step on it, it would float up with you, it was hot into the lungs. It was bad."

He also learned a lesson or two from running with the pack, rather than leading it.

"It's quite humbling being a little bit farther back in the pack where everybody's strong. Everybody's passing you this way, that way, you pass them back and you pass them again," he said. "But still it was good. It keeps you focused a little bit."

When it was over, just about everyone's focus shifted to the well-being of their fallen friend.

"I feel really bad for him because he deserved to win," McCool said. "He clearly won the race, so he deserves to win in my opinion."

Race officials did not make results available as of Saturday night.