Posted: April 16, 2004

Athletics: Sun Cautious On London Debut

From David Monti

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

LONDON (15-Apr) -- She's got the fastest career marathon time of any women entered in Sunday's Flora London Marathon, but at today's news conference Sun Yingjie was hardly talking like a contender.

"I view this event as a learning experience," said the reigning world championships 10,000m bronze medalist adding, "I don't have high expectations of myself this weekend."

Sun, who set the Asian record of 2:19:39 at the Beijing Marathon last October, is more focused on this summer's Athens Olympics where she plans to run two events, but has not decided whether to run the 5000m and 10,000m, or to double in the 10,000m and the marathon.

"I have not finalized yet on that point," she said.

Sun doubled at last summer's world championships, finishing ninth in the 5000m and running the #3 time in the world last year at 10,000m, 30:07.20, when she won her bronze medal. She likes to double at major competitions, taking double gold medals last year at the Asian Championships in the 5-K/10-K double.

"You could say this is quite normal for me," she said matter of factly. "My schedule is usually quite tight."

Sun fully expected to race against defending champion and world record holdedr Paula Radcliffe here, and was surprised and disappointed to learn that Peerless Paula would not be competing.

"It's a bit of a shame that Paula will not take part in the marathon," said Sun who didn't find out that Radcliffe would not be competing until she arrived in London.

A victory by Sun here would be an historic achievement for a Chinese athlete. Despite significant accomplishments within Chinese borders, no Chinese athlete, male of female, has won a major commercial marathon outside of China. The closest they have come is a World Cup victory in 1994.

Subscribe to Race Results Weekly: www.raceresultsweekly.com.

Race results Weekly Archive