As the usual sumptuous field prepares itself for tomorrow’s London Marathon, Britain’s Jon Brown is in as good a position as anyone to assess the event.
Brown has been an outstanding competitor over 26.2 miles for a decade, having finished fourth in the Olympics not just once, but, excruciatingly, twice. While Paula Radcliffe – absent this year after giving birth to a daughter – has registered three historic victories on the streets of the capital within the past five years, Brown has been the outstanding British male runner on that route, having finished eighth in 1998, fourth in 1999 and sixth in 2005.
At 36, still operating from his training base in Vancouver and garnering his resources in characteristically canny fashion, Brown is as willing as ever to tell things as they are. So when he describes the London race as the “premier annual marathon” it is a judgement that carries genuine weight. Being Brown, however, he cannot resist adding that, even if you get the finest fields going, it does not always guarantee the finest races.
“Over the last five years, the field in London has been amazing,” said Brown. “But whether the race actually plays out as good as it looks on paper, you never know. I remember the last time I ran here I think I passed three of the favourites in the last mile.” Brown’s 2005 run did indeed see him finish ahead of three highly fancied Kenyans – Sammy Korir, second fastest in history in Berlin the year before, Evans Rutto, the defending champion, and Paul Tergat, who had finished a second ahead of Korir to set the world record of 2hr 4min 55sec.
But this was London. And in London, even if the favourites falter, there are always other favourites…
At the heart of this year’s event is the meeting of the two athletes whose rivalry has been a key feature of middle distance and marathon running for the past 15 years – Haile Gebrselassie of Ethiopia and Paul Tergat of Kenya.
Both have moved up to the marathon after outstanding track careers, during which Gebrselassie finished on top on all the crucial occasions, including the 2000 Sydney Olympics, when he finished nine-hundredths of a second clear to claim the 10,000m gold.
The margin between the two men will be greater tomorrow, although it may be no more than the gap of 47 seconds that separated them on the last occasion they competed against each other, in the 2002 London Marathon, where Tergat finished second behind Khalid Kannouchi’s world record time of 2hr 5min 38sec.
Since then, of course, Tergat has made the record his own with his 2004 Berlin victory in 2:04.55, but at 37 he is moving towards the end of his career, and this weekend’s race offers him what might be one of his last opportunities to rub in a superiority over Gebrselassie that has come late in the day.
Like Tergat, for whom the Berlin race was his first marathon win in six attempts, Gebrselassie, now 34, has found the marathon tougher than expected. He ran the fastest ever debut in 2002 and missed Tergat’s record by just over a minute two years ago. But still the harsh perception is that he has not yet cracked it.
As this is London, there is a distinct possibility that the Tergat v Gebrselassie match might become a sideshow rather than the main attraction. Tergat’s fellow countrymen Felix Limo, the defending champion, and Martin Lel, victor here in 2005, will figure strongly. There will also be a powerful challenge from US runners, with Kannouchi, a naturalised Moroccan, back to near his best after surgery on both feet, along with the Olympic silver medallist Meb Keflezighi and debutant Ryan Hall.
When you add Italy’s 35-year-old Olympic champion Stefano Baldini and Morocco’s double world champion Jaouad Gharib to the mix, picking a winner becomes a matter of luck rather than judgement.
The women’s race is similarly open in Radcliffe’s absence. On paper, China’s Zhou Chunxiu, the Asian Games champion, is the leading contender as the only runner to have recorded a sub 2:20 time, but no Chinese woman has ever managed better than fourth here.
In contrast, African runners have prospered in London, and in Berhane Adere and Gete Wami Ethiopia have two talented, experienced performers. Eastern Europe has two strong contenders in Russia’s Galina Bogomolova, who has run 2:20.47, and Romania’s Constantina Tomescu-Dita, who has a best of 2:21.30.
But the runner with the wind in her sails, having won the world road running and world cross country titles in recent months, is the Netherlands’ naturalised Kenyan, Lornah Kiplagat.
