August 04, 2008	Monday	Sha'aban 1 429

MACAU, Aug 3: British athletics officials still have no idea whether marathon world record holder Paula Radcliffe will run at the Beijing Olympics even though she is due to join the team at their training camp on Monday.

Radcliffe still hopes to run at the Olympics despite suffering a stress fracture of her left femur which specialists told her would make it impossible for her to compete in Beijing.

However, she has made steady improvement over the past month and is due to join the British team at their base camp in Macau.

Dave Collins, the national performance director of UK Athletics, said it was still too early to speculate about whether she would run in Beijing.

“My crystal ball is unfortunately not working very well so I’ll wait and see where we are but as things positively reflect that’s good news,” Collins told reporters on Sunday.

“It’s confirmation for me that she’s making good progress.”

Collins said a final decision on Radcliffe was likely to be made in Macau.

“The challenge she’s taken on is a considerable one and it’s important to us that challenge is progressing not at the expense of her long-term health but also to see how that performance is progressing in terms of her getting towards good shape to be able to perform,” he said. “There’s a lot of people involved in this, there’s coaches involved, there’s medics involved. You look down, you sit down and you say ‘where are we? Do you feel you’re capable of doing yourself justice?.

“When you’ve got athletes who have got a record of past achievement, of past performance, they’re not going to put themselves in the line if they’re not in the shape to perform.”

Radcliffe, 34, won the world marathon title in 2005 but has never won an Olympic medal and failed to finish in Athens four years ago when she was among the pre-race favourites.

German Irina Mikitenko, who won this year’s London marathon, pulled out of the Olympics last week because of a back injury.—Reuters