Radcliffe the Big Apple's 'marathon mom'

The lead story on the heaps of The New York Times spread about the foyer of the Hilton Hotel in Manhattan at breakfast-time yesterday spelled bad news for the female support runner in the interminable marathon of a US election campaign. According to a poll by the newspaper, 59 per cent of voters deem Sarah Palin unqualified for the post of vice-president. So much, then, for the drawing power of the celebrated Hockey Mom.

Downstairs in the basement of the Hilton, Mary Wittenberg, race director of the New York City Marathon, was busy outlining the impact made by the woman who has come to be known in these parts as the "Marathon Mom".

"I can't stress enough how important Paula has been in getting other mothers into running," Wittenberg said, with a respectful nod in the direction of Paula Radcliffe, who defends the women's title in the annual 26.2 mile race through the Big Apple tomorrow. "Last year Paula's win here, after having given birth to Isla only 10 months before had a ripple effect throughout New York City and beyond.

"The headline the next day was 'Marathon Mom'. I can't tell you how many moms that has inspired to get into running and into the marathon. Paula's impact goes way beyond the sports pages."

Twelve months ago Radcliffe emerged victorious from the mother of all battles in the New York City Marathon, mentally chanting her daughter's name to herself as she pulled clear of Ethiopia's Gete Wami – a fellow "mom" – on the uphill drag to the finish line in Central Park. The poster for this year's race features the snapshot of the Bedfordshire woman holding Isla and acknowledging the cheers of the crowd in the wake of her 2007 triumph. The strap-line asks: "What does it take?"

For Radcliffe to have hit the bullseye of Olympic gold in Beijing it would have taken her to be somewhere in the vicinity of full fitness and she was a good way short of that after suffering a fracture of the femur. Still, three months on from the painful disappointment of hobbling home 23rd in the Chinese capital, the fastest female marathon runner of all time is rapidly regaining fitness and form. Last Sunday, Radcliffe broke the British 10-mile record in Portsmouth, clocking 51min 11sec in the Great South Run, and in New York tomorrow she could become only the second woman to record a hat-trick of victories in the race that launched the running boom.

Grete Waitz, the marathon great from Norway, notched up nine victories in between 1978 and 1988. "Grete's record here is amazing," Radcliffe, whose maiden victory dates back to the 2004 race, acknowledged. At 34, the great British runner might struggle to make it to nine New York wins but the women's record for the undulating course – 2hr 22min 31sec, held by Margaret Okayo of Kenya – is certainly within her scope.

"My first goal is to win the race," Radcliffe said. "My second is take the course record down towards 2hr 20min and possibly below. This race is different from Beijing for me. I would have loved to have been in the shape I'm in now when I was in Beijing."

If Radcliffe were to take a chunk out of the record tomorrow and also complete a third victory, she would earn $190,000 (£124,000) – enough for a Hockey Mom wardrobe and a tidy pile of loose change. Her challengers are likely to be Wami, her seemingly eternal rival, and Catherine Ndereba, the Olympic marathon silver medallist from Kenya. They, too, will be Marathons Moms on the New York victory trail.

Geography teacher who became a legend

*Grete Waitz had already made her mark on the running scene – as a world 3,000m record breaker and world cross-country champion – before she turned to the marathon in 1978. On her debut in New York that year the geography teacher from Oslo sliced two minutes off the world record, clocking 2hr 32min 30sec. She returned to the Big Apple in 1979 and became the first woman to break the 2hr 30min barrier, winning in 2:27:33.

Between 1978 and 1988 Waitz won the New York race nine times. She also won the women's marathon at the inaugural World Championships in Helsinki in 1983 and took Olympic silver in Los Angeles in 1984. Since 2005, she has been fighting to beat cancer. "I am not going to go into details about it until I kick it," she says. Her image has been etched on to the 39,000 finishers' medals for tomorrow's race.

Simon Turnbull