Bordin Rates Sydney Olympic Marathon Course
18 July 1998Olympic marathon champion Gelindo Bordin today rated the Sydney 2000 course a very tough one and predicted it would need a clever runner to prevail.
Bordin, the 1988 Seoul Olympic champion, was driven around the course today. Formerly a surveyor, the 39-year-old Italian also declared himself very impressed with the main Olympic stadium currently under construction at Homebush Bay. Now working in shoe development and marketing for Fila, Bordin inspected the stadium and the marathon course during a brief visit to Sydney.
Whilst rating the Sydney course a tough one, Bordin felt it was still possible the current Olympic marathon record of two hours nine minutes and 21 seconds set by Portugal's Carlos Lopes in Los Angeles in 1984 could be broken. "I think the course is very nice but very tough. There's not really any flat part, it's always up and down," Bordin said.
"I still believe you can run fast on this course, but on the other hand you have to pay something, because when you run up and down your muscles become very tight. "With the runners there are now, I think it is possible to break the Olympic record over here, the course is very tough but it needs a very smart runner to run this course and all the ones that have experience.
"(Australian) Steve Moneghetti can train a lot over here, so I think he will use that chance." Bordin said weather conditions would also play a big part in determining the race time.
With the temperature range likely to be about 16 to 20 degrees, Bordin felt conditions would be the best in 20 years for Olympic marathon competitors after some torrid recent races.
"I don't think anybody will start very fast over here. If the weather is good, after halfway they will push a lot. If somebody wants to do a great time, normally you control the split of your time, but here you cannot because sometimes you're going up and sometimes you're going down."
Bordin suggested competitors in the Sydney Olympics marathon could consider making a decisive break around Glebe Island Bridge, about three-quarters of the way into the 42 kilometre race.
"When you run up the bridge and then down it's very steep and I think somebody could do something there, and it's a good distance from the stadium." He said the course which starts at North Sydney and wends its way over the harbour bridge and through the city out to the Olympic stadium in the west was a very scenic one.
"The view is wonderful because you start from town and you can see the town and run in the park and it's quite different, it's not always the same stuff. In Seoul I remember the road was so big, everywhere always seemed to be the same place."
Bordin also won two European marathon championships but retired in 1993 after requiring knee surgery following the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona where injury prevented him from completing the race.
Estonian runner Jane Salumae, who won the women's section of last weekend's Gold Coast marathon, also inspected the Sydney course today.
"I was in Atlanta in 1996 and I think it's similar to that, it's too much up and down and I think a marathon course must be a little more flat because it's too long a distance," Salumae said.
