News Archive

Monday 23 August 2004

Athens, Greece - Practice, they say, makes perfect. The meticulous planning and

practice over the past year by Japans Mizuki Noguchi certainly helped towards

the perfect moment when she crossed the finishing line in the Panathinaiko

Stadium at the end of probably the most gruelling women’s Olympic

Marathon.

Japanese preparation was perfect

Noguchi’s 2:26:20 not only broke the existing course record by five

minutes, but it also broke the resolve of all her rivals, including the two

fastest women of all time, Kenya’s Catherine Ndereba, who won the silver

medal, and Paula Radcliffe, of Great Britain, whose race finished, slumped on

the roadside, her head in her hands.

While Radcliffe is known for her meticulous preparation, the former World

Cross Country champion’s build-up to the Olympics was far less specific

than Noguchi’s.

While Radcliffe spent a month in southern Spain for heat acclimatisation

training and visited the notoriously tough Marathon to Athens course just a

week before the race, Noguchi spent six months training in heat and at

altitude, first in Kunming in China and then, just as she did before winning

silver at last year’s World Championships in Paris, at St Moritz in

Switzerland.

She broke from the training regime