Radcliffe rolls back the years

The clocks went back in the Big Apple yesterday. Not far enough for Paula Radcliffe, sadly. If only she could have gone back to 17 August and produced the kind of dogged tour de force she summoned in New York yesterday on the morning of the Olympic marathon in Beijing.

In the Chinese capital, in the race that mattered most in the four-year Olympic cycle, the 34-year-old Briton was an ill-prepared shadow of theathlete who has taken the women's marathon to a new dimension – limping home 23rd with just two weeks of proper training behind her following a fracture of the femur. Yesterday, eleven weeks on from the heartache of Beijing, Radcliffe was in a class of her own in the race that launched the running boom.

Her winning time in the ING New York City Marathon, 2hr 25min 43sec, was nothing special in comparison to the world record figureS of 2:15:25 that she set in London five years ago, but make no mistake about it: this was a vintage Radcliffe run. She hit the front from the start and pushed the pace all of the way, running into the teeth of a strong headwind for most of the 26.2 miles. One by one, her rivals dropped away and with four miles to go the Bedfordshire woman had grafted a clear, unassailable lead. She crossed the finish line 1min and 47sec ahead of her closest pursuer, Ludmila Petrova.

By the time the 40-year-old Russian made it to the finishers' enclosure in Central Park, Radcliffe was already soaking up the cheers of the crowd, clutching her 19-month-old daughter, Isla, in her arms. It was a poignant contrast to the post race scene in Beijing. Back then, the lady known in these parts as "the Marathon Mom" looked a broken woman physically and emotionally, bursting into tears as she hugged Liz Yelling, her British team-mate and long-time Bedford & County club colleague.

Little Isla seemed more interested in the name bib pinned to her mother's purple vest than the celebrations or the magnitude of her mother's achievement. It was some feat, too. Having prevailed in 2004 and 2007, Radcliffe became only the second woman to complete a hat-trick of New York wins, following Grete Waitz, the Norwegian who notched nine victories between 1978 and 1988.

It was Radcliffe's eighth victory in ten marathons, her two defeats having both come in Olympic races that have just happened to coincide with illness and injury.

"Yeah, it does make what has happened in the Olympics more frustrating," Radcliffe acknowledged. "Why can I keep getting it right for New York and not for the Olympic Games? But sometimes in life you've just got to take what you're given."

Fittingly, Radcliffe was given a special prize on the winner's podium by Waitz, who has been battling cancer since 2005. "Grete was a huge inspiration to me," Radcliffe said. "To get a third of the way to the number of wins she had here means a lot to me."

Radcliffe also collected $165,000 (£100,000) in prize money and she earned it from the off. She led into the wind on the climb from the start up the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge into Brooklyn, with American Kara Goucher leading the pack tucked in behind her. In New York twelve months ago the world record holder was tracked virtually all of the way, eventually dropping Gete Wami of Ethiopia on the 600m drag up to the finish line. Yesterday it was different.

Passing halfway in 1hr 13min 23sec, Radcliffe still had five rivals in her slipstream but as she cranked up the pace – from 5min 34sec per mile to 5min 12sec – and the wind slowly subsided, her challengers fell away: Catherine Ndereba, the Olympic marathon silver medallist; Wami; Dire Tune, the Boston Marathon champion; Goucher.

By the 20-mile point only Petrova remained in tow but Radcliffe was into a relentless groove. In the 22nd mile she opened a decisive gap and for the last four miles she could enjoy a clear run in the comfort zone. Not that she eased up, covering the second half of the race in 1hr 10min 33sec – 2min 50sec quicker than the first. "It was tough, with the wind and with the other girls tucking in behind me," Radcliffe said, "but I did what I planned to. I wanted to run the second half quicker than the first."

Behind Radcliffe, there was a veterans' world record for Petrova, 2:25:43, and a time of 2:25:53 for Goucher in third place – the fastest ever marathon debut by an American woman, poignantly achieved in the city where she lived until her father was killed in a car crash 26 years ago.

It was the Marathon Mom, though, who was the toast of New York yesterday. "Paula just hammered us," Goucher admiringly reflected.