Athletics: Radcliffe Aims for Happy Ending

It is a measure of the pressure Paula Radcliffe is under to win the marathon at the world championships here tomorrow that even some of the Bedford runner's biggest supporters have used her website to warn that failure is not an option.

"No excuses this time," wrote one fan on her website's -www.paularadcliffe.com - message board. "If you fail don't darken our shores again. You must admit that when it really counts Paula does have a habit of letting everyone - including herself - down."

Others have sprung to her defence but at 31 - with an international career stretching back 12 years - there is a definite mood in the Finnish capital that time is slipping away for her to claim a marathon gold medal at a major event.

Radcliffe has always claimed the only pressure she feels is that she puts on herself.

"Personally, I want to make sure I realise all the preparation I have done and make it all worthwhile," she said.

She enters this event in a similar situation to the 2004 Olympics: on paper she is five minutes quicker this year than her closest rival, Romania's Constantina Dita, based on her winning London Marathon time of 2hr 17min 42sec.

Radcliffe is liked internationally, and would be a hugely popular champion here.

"It would be great to see her finally win a big one," said Dr David Martin, the most respected marathon statistician and a physiologist who worked closely with Sebastian Coe during his career.

"But winning the big commercial marathons is a different proposition from winning a championship race."

Radcliffe has won all five of the big city marathon races she has run, including London on three occasions, but failed to complete the only championship event she has entered.

That was, of course, the Olympics in Athens last year when she dropped out of the race won by Japan's Mizuki Noguchi who, along with her team-mates, had prepared meticulously by regularly running the course from Marathon to Athens.

Noguchi is not here - she started her preparations too late after months of celebration in Japan following her Olympic victory - and the team here is very much a development squad.

Their preparations have still been as scrupulous as ever, including several visits to prepare on the course. The shoe company sponsoring the Japanese have even produced two pairs of special hand-made shoes for their five runners in the race - one in case it is wet - based on details the team have provided on the road surface.

"It's an integral part of their preparation," said Brendan Reilly, the president of Boulder Wave, a company working closely with the Japanese federation.

"Every little attention to detail matters. All these details accumulate and that's what makes the difference. It's the same approach as used by Lance Armstrong."

Radcliffe, in contrast, has been based at UK Athletics' training base two hours away in Turku. She has only been driven briefly over the course, which is made up of a 10km loop the runners will cover four times.

"I'm aware they [the Japanese] have been preparing thoroughly, have been here and will have been training on the course," said Radcliffe.

"But it's about what works for each individual. People prepare in different ways, I have never done that before for any of my marathons, I probably only ran the last 300m of New York [last November] and it didn't do me any harm then and I don't think it will now.

"I have driven around it in a car. I prefer to do that as I take it in better that way. I thought the course was nice, testing in places, but nothing bad. The road surface is good with only one area of cobbled stones."

Reilly has studied the course extensively and knows it intimately. He believes it could suit Radcliffe's style of trying to break away early.

"If you get away at the start there are so many twists and turns you might never be caught," he said. "It's a good course to escape on."

Even with Noguchi absent, this event is one of the strongest at the championships. Besides the Japanese, Kenya also has a strong team. It is led by the Olympic silver medallist Catherine Ndereba, who will be defending the title she won in Paris in 2003, and the former world record holder Tegla Loroupe.

"The work ahead will not be easy but we shall try," said Ndereba, who arrived here on Thursday from a training base in Philadelphia.

Radcliffe will also renew a rivalry with Derartu Tulu dating back more than 10 years. The Ethiopian has had the measure of Radcliffe on the track and in cross-country, but was comfortably beaten by the Briton when they met in the 2003 London Marathon.

When these championships were held here in 1983 the winner was Grete Waitz, a Norwegian, who like Radcliffe had until then been lacking the major global title to validate her greatness.

Back then, though, the women's event was still in its evolutionary stage and did not have the depth it does now.

"The winner could be somebody unexpected," predicted Tulu. "Someone who will surprise everyone."