Athletics: Radcliffe on a road trip to Athens

London Marathon: Capital's streets are the perfect springboard for Britain's first lady as she feels the pull of history

Simon Turnbull
Sunday 13 April 2003 00:00 BST
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Paula Radcliffe was sitting in a suite in the Tower Hotel, picking at the lunch plate balanced on her knees and chewing the metaphorical fat. It was only 2pm but an office party was in full swing in the room next door. The poptastic beat of Bachman Turner Overdrive came booming through the wall. You ain't seen nothing yet? In Radcliffe's case, that could indeed be so.

We have seen a lot from the slender Bedfordshire woman these past 12 months: a debut marathon win in London, a golden 5,000m run at the Commonwealth Games in Manchester, a 10,000m tour de force at the European Championships in Munich, a world-best marathon run in Chicago. And yet the signs are that there is still more to come – on the streets of London today and beyond.

Given favourable conditions on the way from Blackheath to The Mall, it is possible that Radcliffe could lower her world's best time in the 2003 Flora London Marathon. In Chicago six months ago she ran 2hr 17min 18sec, hampered by stomach cramps at 22 miles and running into a strong headwind for the last four miles. The Kenyan men who will be making the pace at the head of the élite women's field today will set off with a target time of 2hr 15min to 2hr 16min.

Radcliffe's only concern will be to keep pace with the schedule she has set in her own mind. "I have my own expectations," she said, keen to emphasise that any marathon run is neither an exact science nor an exercise in choreography. She has already given some thought, though, to what might lie beyond the finish line. The 10,000m final at the world championships in the Stade de France in Paris in August is the only race firmly pencilled into her plans for the summer season, but a first attempt at a world track record also happens to be on her mind.

In the Commonwealth Games 5,000m final in Manchester last July Radcliffe clocked 14min 31.42sec. Had the pace over the first two laps not been of a relatively pedestrian nature, she probably would have run quicker than 14:28.09, the world-record figures set by Jian Bo of China in 1997. "From the shape that I was in last year and that I will hopefully be in this year, I think I am capable of getting near the world record," Radcliffe said. "But I think there are a lot of other girls who are capable of breaking it as well. It's going to be quite exciting in the summer. I think there'll be a few attempts and that maybe we'll see the record change hands a bit. Even last year Gabriela Szabo and Fernanda Ribeiro were pretty much on course for it at Crystal Palace until they started messing around."

The prospect of Radcliffe chasing the record at Crystal Palace this year is a realistic one. The Norwich Union Grand Prix meeting takes place there on 8 Aug-ust, 15 days before the world championship 10,000m final. An attempt on home soil, with a sell-out crowd recreating the electric atmosphere of the City of Manchester Stadium, might prove more appealing than a race against the clock in Zurich a week later.

"Yeah, it would be nice," Radcliffe pondered, before swiftly adding, "but at the moment I'm just focusing on Sunday." It would indeed be nice, and potentially historic too. Not since Thelma Hopkins high- jumped 1.74m at the Cherryvale track in Belfast in 1956 has a British woman broken a world record in Britain in an Olympic-standard event. Zola Budd-Pieterse, who runs in London today, did eclipse Ingrid Kristiansen's 5,000m record at Crystal Palace in 1985, but the 5,000m was not a championship-standard event for women at the time.

The last world record set by a British athlete in Britain in a championship-class track event was the 10,000m run by Dave Bedford, now race director of the London Marathon, at the AAA Championships at Crystal Palace 30 years ago (in the field, Steve Backley set a new javelin mark at the Palace in 1990).

Longer-term, it is athletics history of a greater vintage that Radcliffe has in her sights. Despite the decision to start the women's marathon in the heat of 6pm next year, she is still drawn to the allure of tackling the original marathon course at the Athens Olympics. It was to commemorate the legendary run of the messenger, allegedly Pheidippides, with news of the Battle of Marathon in 490 BC that the first race was held, on the road from Marathon to Athens, in the 1896 Olympics. "I'm thinking of doing the marathon because of that," Radcliffe said, "and because at the moment I think the marathon is probably my strongest event."

Today's race will be Radcliffe's last marathon before she makes her Olympic decision, although she is likely to be at the annual Athens Marathon in November, checking out the hilly route from the comfort of the lead vehicle. It is no surprise to learn that the date and the reconnaissance plan have already been noted in her diary.

Whether it is drinking wheat-grass juice for the nutrients or taking iced baths for the stimulus to the circulation, Radcliffe never leaves a pebble unturned in her preparations. It is unlikely, however, that the leading lady of the marathon will ever try the nutritional combination that fuelled the Greek shepherd Spiridon Louis on his way to victory in the original Olympic marathon: an Easter egg and a bottle of red wine.

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