Olympics: Bloodied but unbowed Radcliffe sets sights on London Olympics

Monday, 18 August 2008

BEIJING - Paula Radcliffe's search for an elusive Olympic medal of any colour is not over despite her 23rd place finish here in the marathon as she insisted she would go on to compete in the London Games in 2012.

The 34-year-old at least finished the race unlike in Athens four years ago, but she ended the event virtually hobbling over the line visibly limping on the left leg, in which she suffered a stress fracture earlier this year.

The world record holder and 2005 world champion shed some tears but pulled herself together and said that however bad she had felt she would have finished the race.

Indeed she took heart from the fact that the winner Romania's Constantina Tomescu is 38, the age she will be in 2012.

"Why not? the winner is exactly the age I will be then and there is no reason why I can't go on to London and maybe just maybe get that medal," said Radcliffe.

Radcliffe had been prominent for much of the race but was dropped just after the 30km mark and from then on she fought against the pain she was feeling mainly in her left calf.

It looked at one point that Radcliffe - who has twice finished fourth at the Olympics in the 5000m in 1996 and the 10000m in 2000 - would again be forced to retire from the race as she stopped 7km from the finish crying out in pain.

However, after stretching her calf while leaning on a barrier she resumed her lonely quest to finish over 11 minutes behind the winner.

"My calf was just so bad I had to stretch it. The pain felt like it was coming up from my foot. Early in the race I had this weird feeling that someone was kicking my foot away while I was running.

"I would have walked because it was something that was actually okay walking. I haven't made the injury worse.

"If I felt I was doing some serious damage I would have stopped. It's horrible when you have to drop out, especially when it's the Olympic Games. So many people have worked so hard to get me here.

"In some ways it's almost quicker to keep going because if you stop you're just left out there on your own.

"They couldn't have been better conditions. When I started to struggle I got a lot of traffic and that was annoying. I was getting lots of fumes as well as everything else."

She admitted that she had really only one leg to run on.

"A pain came up into my calves. It wasn't a sharp pain, if it had been like when the stress fracture was bad I would just have stopped. I felt like I was just running on one leg.

"I wanted to finish. It was really frustrating because I felt really comfortable."