Athletics: Brown dismay over marathon money

John Brown, Britain's leading male marathon runner of recent years, has criticised the Flora London event for offering him nothing to appear in this Sunday's race.

The 33-year-old Welshman, who finished fourth in the 2000 Olympic marathon, is committed to running in the capital's race because he needs a qualifying time of 2hr 15min for this summer's Olympic Games in Athens.

But he has been dismayed to learn that he will not merit any payment for what will be his third run in a race whose athletes' budget is now £2m, even though he finished eighth in 1998 and fourth the following year.

"I have been offered nothing to run in Sunday's race," Brown said, although he did go on to confirm that he had been offered a small fee to appear in a press conference scheduled for today.

That should be an entertaining event given that it will also feature the race director, Dave Bedford, whom Brown admits he fell out with six years ago.

"I don't know if I will make any comment at the conference, but I would be amazed if I didn't," was all Bedford wanted to say last night.

Brown, who has been based in Vancouver for the last 10 years, believes he has been taken advantage of in the light of his need to achieve a qualifying time.

"Dave Bedford has never spoken to me, or even introduced himself to me," Brown said yesterday. Don't ask me what the problem is with me - I have no idea. I can only assume it has something to do with the anti-doping comments I made in 1998, which the race indirectly got caught up in."

Brown has long been an outspoken critic of athletes he suspects may be using drugs, particularly the blood-boosting EPO. He launched a scathing verbal attack on Antonio Pinto after the Portuguese runner - who by that time had earned the first of three London titles - won the 1994 European 10,000 metres title. Pinto strongly denied using illegal drugs and has not failed a test.

Four years later Brown cast doubt on the legitimacy of many performances by non-African distance runners, adding that he wanted "to prove that people can run well not using EPO".

Now he insists his ambitions for Sunday have diminished: "As the race has placed zero value on my participation, then all I think is fair is for me to run the absolute slowest I can, which is anything around 2:14:59."