China's Sun to fill Radcliffe void at London Marathon

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Saturday, January 10, 2004

China's Sun to fill Radcliffe void at London Marathon

With the absence of world record holder Paula Radcliffe, Chinese Sun Yingjie is expected to fill the void left by the Briton at this year's London Marathon.

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With the absence of world record holder Paula Radcliffe, Chinese Sun Yingjie is expected to fill the void left by the Briton at this year's London Marathon.

London marathon organizers has confirmed that Sun, the third-fastest female marathon runner of all time, has entered this year's event.

Sun, the 10,000m bronze medal winner of last year's world championships in Paris, joins an already strong field including Kenya's New York winner Margaret Okayo, Chicago champion Svetlana Zakarova of Russia and Ethiopia's former world track and cross-country champion Geta Wami.

Sun also ran the second-fastest marathon of 2003 behind Radcliffe, when she won the Beijing event in a time of two hours 19 minutes 39 seconds for a new Asian record.

Her entrance was hailed by the organizers as "an exciting addition", who said that she will put the women's-only world record even more under threat.

"She surprised everybody by making the pace the whole way in the world championships last year," London Marathon spokesman Michael Butcher told Xinhua on Friday.

"She looked very tough, looked like an uncompromising runner. From this point of view, she will be an exciting addition.

"And she is not afraid of the opposition, because in Paris she was up against some tough runners. She disregarded their reputation and just ran her own way. I think anyone who runs like that is a good addition to the field."

Chinese runners have competed in the London race before, but failed to put in impressive performance with fourth placing the best result.

"So when Sun appears, we are keen to sign her," said Butcher. "She will bring some quality to the field."

The organizers hope that the presence of Sun and Okayo would offset the absence of Radcliffe.

"Even though we do not have Radcliffe, we've got second-fastestrunner in the world last year (Sun, New York champion and Chicago champion, it will be still a good race," said Butcher.

Radcliffe, who won last year's race in a world record time of 2:15:25, has strengthened the London Marathon's reputation as the top city marathon in the world.

"Obviously we would like to have her here, but we understand that she wants to concentrate on winning the Olympics Games in Athens,"said Butcher.

"She will not decide to run at next year's London Marathon until next Christmas, and it depends on what happens at Athens," he added.

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