Athletics: Radcliffe makes record start

PAULA RADCLIFFE smashed Liz McColgan's long-standing British 10,000m record with a time of 30min 48.58sec at the European Challenge athletics meeting at Lisbon yesterday on her track debut over the distance.

The 24-year-old Bedford runner, who came second to Portugal's Olympic champion Fernanda Ribeiro, believes she can go faster. "I should have run the last 400 metres better," she said. "But four laps out I had a recurrence of the stomach bug which I picked up in Marrakesh at the World Cross-Country."

Radcliffe, who will take on McColgan in the Compaq road races in Balmoral over five miles on Saturday, plans to return after that race for a further one week's altitude training in Colorado.

She intends doing the 10,000m at the European Championships and either the 1500m or 5,000m or both at the Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur in September.