Globe Runner blog – Butcher’s Blog – Articles by Pat Butcher – Geb and Radcliffe in Berlin – OMEN II

The Berlin Marathon, on September 25 is going to be a fascinating event. Not for the usual reason, that we might get another world record (or two) on the acknowledged fastest course in the world, especially since the world record holders are competing. But far more interestingly, it will tell us, nine months ahead of the Olympic Games, just how the ageing Haile Gebrselassie and Paula Radcliffe are likely to fare at London 2012.

Haile is now 38 (‘at least,’ says the likes of Wilson Boit Kipketer, who kept a straight face when he said, ‘you can’t believe that Ethiopian calendar’). Haile, of course laughed his head off when we told him that. As for Radcliffe, she will be 38 before the end of this year.

Geb and Radcliffe (2.03.59 and 2.15.25) will take solace and inspiration from the example of Carlos Lopes of Portugal, who won in Los Angeles 1984 (in a record that lasted until Beijing 2008) at the age of 37; and from that of Constantina Dita of Romania, who was a year older than Lopes when she won in Beijing three years ago.

Of course, if Geb never ran another step in anger or competition, his status as the greatest distance runner who ever laced a shoe has already been long assured.

 

 

Even before the late, lamented Sammy Wanjiru took the Olympic field apart, with a new record, in a heat-wave, it looked a smart move on Haile’s part to lope around the 10,000 metres in Beijing instead. And when he set the world record in Berlin a month later, he confirmed how much that track training had helped him. Since then, he has had another three rapid, victorious marathons, two in Dubai, and another in Berlin.

But there was a revealing moment after he dropped out of the New York Marathon last autumn.

Haile has said on numerous occasions that the day anyone announces a retirement however far in advance, it’s actually the day they make the announcement that they retire.

And he did exactly that in New York. Sure, he rescinded that decision, and has had a couple of fine, fast victories in shorter road races since then. But on his own admission, he is in retirement mode. And that is hardly the best background to be making a final assault on the Olympic citadel.

If the deceased Wanjiru had been from anywhere other than Kenya or Ethiopia, we might say we’re unlikely to see anyone as outstanding as him again from that neck of the woods. But such is the wealth of talent in East Africa, underlined by a legion of colleagues and Kenyans already breathing down his neck, even Haile is going to have his work cut out to do little more than take the accolades and applause of the admiring crowds in east London next August.

I would suggest the likelihood of a Radcliffe success next year is even more remote.

Despite the more than three minutes advantage that she enjoys over the next best woman marathoner in history (easily outstripping Geb’s 30 seconds margin), the lack of a sprint finish and two successive Olympics marred by illness and injury mean that the Briton sorely needs the imprimatur of an Olympic title, to ensure her place among the immortals.

The omens do not look good.

Although she went a long way towards proving that her two Olympic performances – dropped out in Athens, 23rd in Beijing – were aberrations when she won the New York Marathon shortly afterwards on both occasions, Radcliffe’s world record dates back to London 2003.

And, in close to three years, Radcliffe has barely competed – in contrast to Haile, who has continued to win in very fast times, including a second world record. And, although a recent year and half break from competition might be explained by a foot operation and the birth of a second child, her last major win, in the New York half-marathon in 2009, was an average performance by her former standards. She subsequently withdrew from World Championships selection, then could only finish fourth in that year’s New York Marathon. Her only race since then has been a 10k in London last month, when she struggled to finish third in a mediocre field and, with archetypal British understatement, called her performance, “a bit of a disaster”.

In short, at a time of life and career when she should have been doing the same as Geb, Radcliffe has been, in effect, running on the spot.

The aforementioned lack of a sprint has contributed towards Radcliffe’s regular front-running, a tactic which has drawn widespread admiration, and satisfaction when she has been rewarded with crushing victories and fast times. In addition, Radcliffe is as personable a character as Haile, albeit somewhat less of a public figure.

In common with those thousands, if not millions of fans worldwide, notwithstanding a shared nationality, nothing would please me more than to see Radcliffe run fast in Berlin, thus assuring herself of selection for the Olympic Games; then going on to use her knowledge of the streets of London to best advantage and win the Olympic title that would cap a marvellous if sometimes fraught career.

But not only does the crystal ball remain resolutely cloudy, and phone calls to Delphi remain unanswered, the magic opera glasses are blurring so badly that the figures turning first into the Olympic stadium at the end of the marathons remain completely indistinguishable.

Pat Butchers BLOG

www.globerunner.org