Radcliffe in a world of her own

It would also surely be the only possible way of topping this. Radcliffe's winning time of 2hrs 15min 25sec, slicing 1min 53sec from her previous record set in Chicago last year and 3min 31sec faster than her victorious debut here 12 months earlier, almost defied credibility.

Catherine Ndereba, Kenya's former record holder, is a fantastic athlete but was here left four and a half minutes adrift in second place. Radcliffe's-performance would have placed her 15th in one of the highest quality men's races ever staged.

Normally, a trophy is handed as a matter of course to the first British man to finish. As Radcliffe was home two-and-a-half minutes quicker than northern men's cross country champ, Chris Cariss, they had to give her that award too. She was even faster than Jim Peters, the great marathon man the trophy was named after.

But though the statistics are simply staggering, the sight of Radcliffe's head bobbing 10 to the dozen as, impossibly, she powered through the 26th and last mile in 4min 48sec, the fastest ever recorded by a woman in any marathon, seemed much more so. How could she start so fast and finish even faster?

Forget her two male pacemakers. It would be criminal if all the controversy about them persuades people to believe Radcliffe wouldn't have gone so fast without their aid. We have to believe her assertion that they made no difference because, though she took some protection from them during the latter stages, she was also held back by them at other points.

Nothing should be allowed to devalue this achievement. Her Irish physio Ger Hartmann called it "a quantum leap" for athletics and reckoned that her pursuers will now be forced to reassess their whole approach to training and race preparation if they're not to be left even further behind.

Third-placed Deena Drossin, with a new US record, reckoned she had been inspired by Radcliffe's barrierbreaking to do just that. Yet others like the great Derartu Tulu, who once always had her measure but was yesterday left in tears after finishing 11 minutes adrift, now seem increasingly demoralised.

Who or what can stop her now? If she can avoid injuries over this next 18 months, then perhaps it's only the summer heat and pollution on the historic and demanding Athens course. She reiterated that the "crazy" 6pm start time meant she still hadn't ruled out doing the 10,000m rather than the marathon.

Surely, it must be the marathon, though. Hartmann said: "Paula will go to Athens this August as we carry out our detailed preparations. We will leave absolutely no stone unturned.

"Paula can run very well in the heat - she proved it winning the world half-marathon championships in Veracruz - and the tougher the conditionsthe more it will suit her. If you'd seen pictures of her four weeks ago after her bike accident all cut and bruised, you'll know from this run just how mentally and physically hard she is."

He revealed how she had used a special ointment, concocted from the oil taken from the bellies of emus and used for centuries by Aborigines, to help heal her wounds. Ah, that's the secret then. The Chinese had their caterpillar fungus, the Japanese had their hornet's juice but good old Paula just ends up delving where only Rod Hull dared.

Only her tour de force could have eclipsed one of the great London men's races which saw Ethiopia's Olympic and world champion Gezahegne Abera produce another of his celebrated 'head waiter' acts, sprinting away from four rivals in a blanket finish to eventually win by a couple of strides from Italian Stefano Baldini, both men being timed at 2:07:56.

Abera has now won six international marathons with a combined winning margin of just 20 seconds. That's one way of doing it. Radcliffe? Well, she's won all her three by a grand total of 10mins 13sec. We really are talking about a woman running in a world of her own.