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 “what it takes” and has spoken of his disappointment that UK Athletics has decided that he has not.

Turner has written a letter to UK Athletics and is hoping for a quick response from them. The athlete believes that a string of injuries has influenced the decision of the panel but he still thinks that he is capable of “making a final now or within the next two years”. This must be a realistic aim if lottery funding is to be provided to an athlete.

Turner finished third in the 110 metre hurdles at the Commonwealth Games in 2006 and won a bronze medal in the same event at the European Athletics Championships in the same year.

If the appeal is not a success, Turner, who has revealed that he will never give up on his dream of “winning a medal in the Olympics”, may look for a part-time job to fund himself or may consider asking for a sponsor.

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.

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” and may even threaten their lives.

Tassos Gousis and Dimitris Regas, both sprinters from Greece, were also charged with using the same substance. The hurdler’s coach, George Panagiotopoulos, has been charged with supplying banned substances and is now facing a prison sentence of up to three years, as well as a potentially hefty fine.

The athletes and the coach have all spoken out about their apparent innocence but they will have to face trial within one year. Halkia remains adamant that she has never been involved with steroids and believes that her ‘B’ sample was tampered with by “third parties”.

It is certainly a sad chapter in the life of an athlete who shot to fame after her performance in the 2004 Olympics. She was relatively unknown prior to her involvement in the Olympics, with a previous highlight being a sixth place finish in the 400 metres event at the World Indoor Championships in Budapest. She currently holds the Greek record for both the 400 metres and the 400 metres hurdling event.