Tuesday 19 April 2005
Paula Radcliffe, the women’s World record holder and Jon Brown who has twice finished fourth in the men’s Olympic Marathon, will head an eight-strong Marathon squad which will be apart of the Norwich Union Great Britain and Northern Ireland Team at this summer’s 10th edition of the IAAF World Championships in Athletics, Helsinki, Finland (6 – 14 August) which incorporates the World Marathon Cup.
The Marathon Team is:
Men
Jon Brown Sheffield AC
Huw Lobb Bedford & County
Dan Robinson Tipton Harriers
Women
Paula Radcliffe Bedford & County
Mara Yamauchi Harrow AC
Hayley Haining City of Glasgow AC
Debbie Mason Tipton Harriers
Liz Yelling Bedford & County
Brief bios:
Brown, fourth in the Marathons at the last two Olympics and the UK 10,000m record holder, sealed his Helsinki place by running his fastest ever time, 2:09:31, to finish sixth in Sunday’s Flora London Marathon.
Lobb earned his GB Team debut at the age of 29 by clocking 2:14:33 in London on Sunday - having placed 373rd in 2:43:54 on his London debut in 1999 and improved in all his six successive races over 26.2 miles.
Robinson is the third man under the UKA standard of 2:15:00 during the qualifying period, having run London in 2:13:53 last year to earn a place in the Olympics Marathon in Athens, where he finished 22nd in 2:17:53.
Radcliffe will bid for success in Helsinki having won her third Flora London Marathon on Sunday in 2:17:42, the fastest ever for a Women-Only race.
Yamauchi, who won the English National Cross Country Championship in 1997 (when she was Miss Myers), was the second UK athlete to finish Sunday’s Flora London Marathon in 2:31:52, a massive personal best by 8 minutes 24 seconds.
Haining, a Bronze medallist with the GB Team at the 1998 World Cross Country Championships, completed a remarkable return to international standard from a series of injuries by running Sunday’s Flora London Marathon in 2:35:33.
Mason, fourth in the 2002 Commonwealth Games marathon, earned her GB debut in a major championship at the age of 37 by hauling her badly blistered feet over the London finishing line in 2:36:59 - a single second inside the Helsinki qualifying time.
Yelling, first Briton to finish the Olympics Women’s Marathon last year, has been selected subject to her recovering fully from a calf injury that resulted in her suffering badly from cramp in London, where she finished in 2:37:42.
http://www.iaaf.org/WCH05/news/Kind=2/newsId=29184.html