Curley seals ‘dream’ race with a kiss
Though 62 places separated Curley from the new champion, the event’s oldest competitor was intent on savouring every stride and every second of that final 400m.
Her smile was constant while her arms spun like wind turbines waving to friends and family, which included husband Adrian, mother Bridget and her seven-year-old son Emmett, as she circled The Bird’s Nest arena.
And as she crossed the line she fell to the ground, not in exhaustion but to plant a kiss on the running track.
“I came down to the track here on Friday night and I actually cried sitting in the stadium because I said to myself: “I want to be on that track I want to get the feel of being an Olympian,’” revealed the 39-year-old Tullamore Harriers star.
“This is a total dream. Every athlete wants to kiss the ground in an Olympic Stadium. I didn’t think I would be one of them. The chapter opened this morning putting on my number and each verse unfolded, unfolded and unfolded. The final section was coming into the stadium, it was brilliant. It was fantastic.”
Curley, a World Cross Country team medallist in 1997, was a late, late addition to the Irish squad with the Olympic Council of Ireland last month accepting her B qualifying time set in Rotterdam in April.
And so the part-time chef, found herself lining alongside the best professional marathon runners in the world at 7.30am local time in Tiananmen Square yesterday.
With little training and preparation she adopted a conservative race strategy from the starter’s gun under the watchful eye of Chairman Mao alongside the Forbidden City.
“That was the plan,” she said. “My splits were quite even, I might have dropped a bit on the way. I felt consistent throughout though my feet are burning. It is way outside my personal best but my aim was to finish it.”
Curley finished 63rd in 2:47.16 with 69 finishing the course and 13 withdrawing.
She revealed she received plenty of support from fellow competitors during the 20-minute warm-up.
“I was very, very nervous in the morning. There were all these top class athletes and to share the cobblestones with them was brilliant, it was my first time being so close to them. I spoke to Paula (Radcliffe) and wished her well and she was very, very nice. They made me feel very relaxed.”
The heat, humidity and smog which had caused Curley — and Olympic organisers — some sleepless nights failed to materialise. Run under cloudy skies, the temperature never topped 24 degrees with the humidity from start to finish averaging at 71%.
“We were in Japan training for a week and the weather was really hot. It was about 38 to 39 degrees at 7am. There were days that I went out and struggled to do half an hour and I was saying to myself: ‘What is Beijing going to be like? How am I going to continue?’ But it was perfect. It was like a warm summer’s day in Ireland.”
Curley also became the first Irish woman to contest and Olympic marathon since Marie Rollins-Murphy and Ailish Smith competed in Seoul 20 years.
But Curley’s story wasn’t the only Olympic fairytale of the day. At 38, race winner Tomescu, a year younger than the Offaly native, became the oldest Olympic women’s marathon winner by eight years and believes her age worked to her advantage.
“The experience helped me,” she admitted. “I have raced a lot before, I know a lot about running.”
After breaking from the pack at the midway stage, Tomescu spent the remainder of the course looking over her shoulder “I said (to myself,) what happened, why are they not coming? Maybe they thought I wouldn’t finish in the top three.”
She came home in 2:26.44 while Catherine Ndereba (2:27.06) survived a sprint finish from Chunxiu Zhou (2:27.07) to decide silver and bronze.
The golden girl of British athletics Paul Radcliffe again endured Olympic marathon misery when 23rd in 2:32.38.
“Cardio-vascularly I felt comfortable but my legs had gone. My calf went first then it went up the entire leg and it felt like I was running on one leg. I was going to get to the finish line no matter what, because that was my race.”
But she vowed: “We’ll still keep our fingers crossed for 2012,” she said.
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