A 41-year-old runner collapsed and died near the end of a half-marathon in downtown Toronto on Sunday morning.

The Toronto man was one of about 10,000 athletes from 30 countries taking part in the 2006 Scotiabank Toronto Waterfront Marathon, which includes both marathon and half-marathon distances.

He collapsed in the final kilometre of the 21-kilometre race.

Paramedics arrived on the scene to find the man without any vital signs. Emergency crews tried to revive him, but with no success.

The victim's identity has not been released.

The runner's death marks the first fatality in the seven years of the annual race.

However, there have been three deaths in the Toronto Marathon, a different event, over the past five years.

Last October, an Oakville man died after completing the half-marathon. Another man died in the 2004 race and another in 2001.

Record-beating times

A Kenyan man raced to the finish line in the second-fastest time ever recorded in Canada.

Daniel Rono ran the course in two hours, 10 minutes and 14 seconds to beat Abderrahime Bouramdane of Morocco by 26 seconds.

The fastest marathon time recorded in Canada happened at the 1976 Montreal Olympics when Waldemar Cierpinski of East Germany took the gold medal with a time of 2:09.55.

Malgorzata Sobanska of Poland also set a course record in Toronto to win the women's division in 2:34.31. That time beat Russia's Lyubov Morgunova's record time of 2:36.20 set in 2003.

At the 2003 event, Ed Whitlock, 75, became the first person over 70 years of age to break the three-hour barrier in a marathon.

This year, he finished in 3:08:34.5, topping a previous 75-plus world record of 3:18.10.

With files from Canadian Press