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: “I was determined to feel comfortable at the halfway point.

The last two times it’s been a really close finish, so it was nice”. Her only regret was not setting a course record, something she believes she could have achieved “on a calm day” but the windy conditions made it impossible.

British fans of athletics were also impressed by the performance of Hayley Haining. She finished in twelfth position, completing the course in just 2 hours, 35 minutes and 11 seconds. Furthermore, Lucy Macalister managed to finish four seconds behind Haining.

The men’s race was won by Marilson Gomes dos Santos, who completed the course in a time of just 2 hours, 8 minutes, and 43 seconds. The athlete from Brazil finished ahead of Abderrahim Goumri.

The Moroccan athlete finished with a time of 2 hours, 9 minutes, and 7 seconds. The men’s race was slightly more exciting than the women’s race as it came with a particularly a tight finish.