Turner set to appeal over funding

On November 18, 2008 by

Andy Turner has revealed that he is going to appeal against a recent decision to bring an end to his lottery funding. The sprint hurdler from Nottinghamshire, who is 28 years of age, is one of several athletes from Great Britain who were informed that their funding is going to be stopped or reduced last week.

The decision was made by UK Athletics, who have revealed that the selection process was fair and thorough and the athletes who have been affected by the changes in funding have simply failed to meet the appropriate criteria. However, Turner believes that he has

Radcliffe victorious in New York

On November 4, 2008 by

This weekend saw Paula Radcliffe reach yet another impressive milestone in her career when she became just the second woman in the world to win the New York Marathon a total of three times and managed to dominate the race.

Radcliffe took just two hours, twenty-three minutes and fifty-six seconds to complete the marathon and she finished almost two minutes ahead of her closest rival for the title, 40-year-old Russian athlete Ludmila Petrova.

However, Petrova managed to achieve a personal milestone as well this weekend as she became the oldest woman to finish in the top two since 1987, when British athlete Priscilla Welch won the New York marathon at the age of 42.

A further record was set by Kara Goucher, the American athlete who finished third in the race. She became the first American to finish in the top three since Anne Marie Letko in 1994.

This statistic is all the more impressive when viewed in the light of the fact that Goucher was making her marathon debut. It was an important day for the American athlete, who was competing in the city where she was born and where her father was sadly killed when she was a young child.

The New York Marathon was an important event for Radcliffe, who had a lot to prove to the British public following a disappointing performance at the Olympic Games.

The race has always been a good opportunity for the athlete to prove herself. In 2004 her victory came after a disappointing performance at the Olympic Games in Athens. Her win in 2007 came just ten months after the birth of her first child.

This year, injury severely hampered her preparations prior to the Games in Beijing but she managed to put in an impressive performance during the Great South Run in Portsmouth recently.

The confidence gained by that performance was clear for all to see in New York and, unlike her previous victories in the city, she managed to win by a large margin.

This margin made the victory all the more sweet and Radcliffe revealed that she had made it her aim to open up a comfortable distance between herself and the other athletes:

Halkia may face jail sentence

On November 3, 2008 by

Fani Halkia may be forced to spend up to two years in prison after a Greek prosecutor charged her with using banned steroids. The Greek hurdler, who won gold in the 400 metres hurdling event during the Olympic Games in 2004, was apparently found to have used methyltrienolone.

She was prevented from competing in this year’s Olympic Games in Beijing when her ‘B’ sample was found to contain the steroid, which the International Olympic Committee defines as a drug which has the potential to "damage the health of athletes