Radcliffe Beats Fast Track on Road to Athens

The next time most of the crowd here will see Paula Radcliffe will almost certainly be on August 22 when she lines up in Marathon to begin the 26.2-mile trip back to Athens in what will be the blue riband event of the Olympics.

They can at least be reas sured she will return today to her training base in the French Pyrenees to complete her preparations firmly back on target for a gold medal after another fabulous performance in a 10,000 metres race specially arranged for her here last night.

At least they called it a race but, as is usually the case these days when Radcliffe is running, it was more of a time trial. From the gun it was just she and the pacemaker Yuliya Kosenkova.

The Russian was supposed to take Radcliffe to halfway but survived only two kilometres before dropping out. Then it was just the Briton and the clock.

When she finally stopped it, it showed 30min 17.15sec, a time beaten only eight times in history. None of them, however, was run in Gateshead with the sponsor's flags stretched horizontally stiff in the wind.

"They were very difficult conditions but I am very satisfied with the run," said Radcliffe. "It was windy. I didn't think it was too bad for the race but then the wind turned around. I kept it going as long as I could."

This was Radcliffe's first track race in Britain since winning the Commonwealth 5,000m title two years ago and her first 10,000m since she ran 30:01.09, the second fastest in history, when she claimed the European title in Munich soon afterwards.

Perhaps the best measurement of this latest performance was the fact that she managed to lap the whole field, including Portugal's Fernanda Ribeiro, the 1996 Olympic 10,000m champion who has caused Radcliffe so much heartache in the past by out-sprinting her in major championships.

The most important thing is that this, following Radcliffe's performance in Bydgoszcz the previous week when she had run the third fastest 5,000m in history, proves the injury and illness problems that have dogged her since she set her second world record in the marathon 16 months ago are now firmly behind her.

Radcliffe had always planned to run a 10,000m before Athens in an attempt to achieve the Olympic qualifying time of 31:45. She will now certainly be selected in the team alongside Kathy Butler, the only other British woman to have the standard following another failed attempt by Hayley Yelling here.

But Radcliffe has no plans to run the distance in Greece unless something goes disastrously wrong between now and the games - or something goes brilliantly right. When asked under what circumstances she could see herself running the 10,000m in Athens when it comes only five days after the marathon on what promises to be a brutally tough course, she smiled and said: "If I feel great."

The only thing that would make her feel that good would be if she already had a gold medal hanging round her neck and yet even then surely even Radcliffe, who has given a fair impression of being Superwoman these last two years, would not be able to recover in time to attempt to become the first woman in history to win both distances at the same Olympics.

She will now concentrate on training at altitude, logging upwards of 140 miles per week, in the hope that she will arrive in the kind of shape she did at the London Marathon in April 2003 when she ran 2 hr 15min 25sec.

Even Radcliffe will not be able to approach that kind of time on the original course that climbs for the first 20 miles before plunging the last six miles into a Greek capital that is among the most polluted cities in Europe. Add temperatures approaching 100 degrees when the race starts at 6pm and Radcliffe could run as much as 15 minutes outside her world record and still win. Whatever, it will take something extraordinary to beat her if she turns up in this kind of form.

It was not just Radcliffe who suffered in the conditions. Kenenisa Bekele, her male equivalent as the world's leading distance runner, failed by six seconds to break the track record of Brendan Foster set the day this stadium opened 30 years ago.

The Ethiopian, who this year has broken his training partner Haile Gebrselassie's world records for 5,000m and 10,000m, won comfortably in 7:41.31 but, as so many before him have discovered, the north-east weather is a tough competitor. "It was so windy," he said.

Kelly Holmes, who like Radcliffe has suffered more than her fair share of setbacks, also looked to be in fine form approaching Athens as she he won the 1500m in 4:06.83.

Other Britons to impress were Chris Rawlinson, winner of the 400m hurdles in 48.58, and Chris Lambert, a 23-year-old Harvard politics graduate from London. He surprised more fancied Britons, including the 2003 world indoor champion Marlon Devonish and Christian Malcolm, to win the 200m in 20.57sec.

"It was really good to beat those guys," said Lambert. "I am younger than the other guys and for me it is harder to get recognition. I am a full-time athlete now and I am just trying to put everything I have into the sport."