Paula Radcliffe

Paula Radcliffe, 33, of Great Britain ran one step ahead of Ethiopia’s Gete Wami, who had followed her closely for the entire race.

Radcliffe looked as opposite to Lel as a great runner will ever look. She runs in the mold of the legendary Czech Olympic champion Emil Zátopek, whose every effort was illustrated by his thrashing arms, rocking shoulders, and grimaces of pain. Radcliffe’s trademark head-bob had grown more pronounced throughout the race as she had failed to shake the impassive, smooth-striding Wami—a woman who has outsprinted her in many major track events throughout their long careers. Unlike Goumri, who shared much of the pacemaking and never dropped from Lel’s line of vision, Wami ran a step behind Radcliffe for mile after mile. The crowds’ thundering cheers are all that any race leader in New York can ever hear, and observers wondered whether Radcliffe could even tell that Wami was still there.

Radcliffe had made two serious attempts to break Wami. She had built a lead of as much as five seconds on Fifth Avenue, but Wami had responded and returned to the leader’s heels. After 15 years of meetings in premier running events, these two know each other’s strengths and weaknesses, and Radcliffe’s strength is her strength. The world’s running experts filling the race’s media center and watching on huge TV screens shifted from believing that Radcliffe had cemented her victory to an equal certainty that she had made her final bid and was now vulnerable to Wami’s superior speed. On Central Park South, Radcliffe made another try. The phantom elastic between the two stretched only three meters this time, and again Wami was back. But this time, rather than resuming her following role, she attacked and went straight past Radcliffe to lead for the first time in the race. It was a commitment: Again, the big kicker was throwing down her cards. The race seemed over.

Radcliffe let Wami get one meter ahead, and then, miraculously, she became Martin Lel. She simply said “No.”
Was it too many times leading races until the final meters, only to be outkicked by the sprinters? Too many times reading “Poor, brave Paula” in the British press, about her lack of a finish? At the sight of Wami passing on her left, her response was electric. She lifted to a full-out drive and flew past Wami at a speed that left experts staring speechless. Like Lel, she tore past the 26-mile mark with a lead that widened with every stride. She strode through the finishing ribbon in 2:23:09, a nearly incredible 23 seconds ahead of the stunned Wami, who merely maintained form to the line.

Wami was coming back from a win at the real,- Berlin Marathon victory on September 30, but those who saw the race might doubt whether anything could have overcome Paula Radcliffe’s strength of will today. Radcliffe, who was returning after a two-year break to have a child—and then to recover from a stress-fractured sacrum that resulted from the birth—also simply loves to race. “It was great fun today,” she said. “Way more than crosstraining in a pool. And I’m just so glad to be back.” Her win was her seventh in the seven marathons that she has finished; her inspiration now comes in part from her single loss: She dropped out of the Athens Olympic marathon, depleted by effects of a pain medication. But Beijing is not her final goal. “If my body holds together, and I think it should, I’d like to finish my career by running the Olympic Marathon in my home country in 2012,” she said. The rest of the world’s top women marathoners may need new some tactics. “Sprinting at the end of a marathon is a different thing from sprinting 400 meters,” said the world record-holder and two-time New York champion. “This is my territory.”