Posted: April 16, 2004

Athletics: Yelling To Pace Top Women in London

From David Monti

(c) 2004 Race Results Weekly, all rights reserved RaceResultsWeekly.com

LONDON (15-Apr) -- Although the first British man and woman to cross the finish line at Sunday's Flora London Marathon will earn a provisional berth for this summer's Olympic marathon, Liz Yelling is feeling confident that her 2:30:58 marathon debut at Berlin last September will get her the nod from UK athletics selectors, instead. She'll only be running halfway on Sunday.

"It's a calculated risk," said Yelling who will instead act as a pacemaker for the top women in the race. She knows that the chances of another British woman topping her time from Berlin is very unlikely. Indeed, the top British entrants --Joe Lodge, Birhan Dagne and Shona Crombie-Hicks-- will probably have difficulty even breaking the IAAF Olympic "A" standard time of 2:37:00. Paula Radcliffe, who will not be competing here, has already been named to the British team and has handily surpassed the qualifying time. It is likely that only Radcliffe and Yelling will toe the line for Britain at the marathon in Athens.

Yelling will instead be helping Sun Yingjie, Margaret Okayo, Svetlana Zakharova, Gete Wami and the other favorites try to run their fastest times. She is anticipating that the first half split could be under 1:10:00.

"I'll kill myself if that's what they want," said Yelling, pointing out that her career best time for the half-marathon is only 1:11:42. "I feel I can run much faster than that at the moment."

She also pointed out that none of the British contenders would be in that lead pack, and it is up to them to run their own races. "If they run off with me, they'd have trouble in the second half of the race," Yelling said.

Yelling, who is the sister-in-law of Hayley Yelling (she is married to Hayley's brother, Martin), cited her close friendship with Paula Radcliffe as a key advantage for her as an athlete. They run for the same club, Bedford & County, live in the same area, and are both coached by Alex Stanton.

"We're good friends," said Yelling. "We go out for coffee. We're just mates."

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