Teenage kicks all through the night.
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The last time the first two runners were given the same time was when Dick Beardsley and Inge Simonsen finished together. This year, Gezahegne Abera’s confidence in his sprint finish kept the decisive move back until the last seconds. Stefano Baldini couldn’t finish quite fast enough to take advantage of Abera’s victory salute. This was the first marathon I’ve seen where five athletes entered the finish together. Tergat again seemed tired at the end. (So, OK, I was wrong.)
Paula Radcliffe hogged the media coverage. Partly because she is British, of course, but that doesn’t explain her popularlity in the States. Some of it is that she is intelligent and open, and a comfortable interviewee. But some of it must be that she has the decency to make running look difficult. None of the male principals had to count to a hundred to mask their stomach problems. Tergat just floats above the ground, Baldini has a more muscular style of running, but none of them looked uncomfortable.
Only the BBC gave the men’s race any decent coverage. Most of the papers concentrated on ’Paula’ (as they call her with unearned familiarity). The papers know, however, that London is the only sporting event that a significant number of readers take part in, so their allegiance is mixed. The common approach is to find a representative sample of charity runners. None could resist mentioning Alastair Campbell, though only the Times dared to ask him to contextualise his performance. "Mr Campbell was asked why he had failed to best the marathon time run by President Bush of 3 hours 44 minutes set in Texas in 1993. With a spin-doctor’s eye for the positive, he replied: "At least I beat Zola Budd," an achievement that, while true, he shared with all 32,745 other competitors following Ms Budd’s withdrawal with low blood-sugar six miles short of the finish line."
Dave Williams lived up to his own hype, helped perhaps by the shoes he bought the day before. Phil Cook who tracked him for at least the first half and may have kept him to a realistic pace.
If there’s anyone left out of our results, please tell me. The individual results filenames changed since I put them up on Sunday night, but the links now work again.
Last updated 26 December 2005
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We always give Dave Williams a fair amount of stick, most of it well deserved due to his desire to treat Thursday night runs like 5k races and his keen eye for a sympathetic ear. I often find myself yelling at him for leaving his Sunday race on the Les Croups club run.
However, on this occasion, Dave deserves a pat on the back for running a sensible race and an enviable time. So credit where it’s due and well done Dave.
Posted by Simon -AT-REMOVE_THIS- 15/4/2003 12:40 pm GMT