Paula Radcliffe at Wizz Air Skopje Marathon 2018
Another edition of Wizz Air Skopje Marathon and another super star from the athletic world to be our promoter.
This year, our promoter is the legendary female marathon World Record Holder, Paula Radcliffe from Great Britain. Her current World Record is 2:15.25 ran at London marathon in 2003.
She first started doing athletics at the age of 12. At the very beginning, she wasn’t very successful. At her first race at national level as a 12-year-old girl, back in 1986, she ended 299th in the English Schools Cross Country Championships. She finished 4th in the same race, one year later. She quickly and increasingly started to show her talent for running.
Although she achieved more significant successes, like winning junior world championship titles, and then world championship titles in cross-country, 10.000m, European championship titles until 2002, however, the world athletics public started noticing her in 2002 when she won her debut marathon in London and later that year, Chicago Marathon running the world record at the time of 2: 17.18. A year later, she famously ran the still standing World Record at London Marathon.
What is fascinating about this 44-year-old lady is the fact that she successfully managed balancing her athletics professional responsibilities with her family life. She is a mother of two children, the daughter Isla (2007) and the son Raphael (2010) and she is the wife of the famous coach Gary Lough since 2001. Gary is the current coach of the legendary Mo Farah. They currently reside in Monte Carlo. She proudly says that now, having withdrawn from professional running, she wants to spend time with her children, helping them with their school work, she even studies French with them (the official language in Monte Carlo) and as a joke, she admits that the kids are better in studying French than she is.
Although she has been a “retired” athlete and a marathoner for several years now, she is still a huge supporter of this sport, always present at great athletic events and marathons as a promoter and she is happy to support women marathon running, which is one of the main reasons why she accepted our invitation to be part of this year’s Wizz Air Skopje Marathon.
She also plays a huge role in IAAF, (International Association of Athletics Federations), and she is a serious advocate against doping – prohibited drugs/substances amongst athletes.
We look forward to welcoming her in Macedonia at Wizz Air Skopje Marathon, on May 6th.