If Kenya's Tegla Loroupe wins the women's marathon championship through the streets of Sydney tomorrow morning, she will be remembering an old teacher back in her home village of Kapenguria.
Deprived of the luxuries enjoyed by the western world, she recalls having to run to and from school. And one teacher, in particular, ensured she ran fast.
"He was always angry if children arrived late, so I soon made a point of running as fast as I could to avoid being punished," she said.
Fifteen years on, at the age of 27, she's still in a hurry and the evidence will be there for the world to see when she goes in search of the biggest win in a career decorated by some remarkable triumphs in Europe and America.
In all, she's run a staggering number of 15 marathons, with back-to-back successes in New York and Rotterdam among her eight wins. And the compelling testimony to a career with few parallels came in September and October last year.
On successive weekends, Loroupe won a half marathon, set a world record of two hours 20 minutes 43 three seconds for the full marathon in Berlin, won another half marathon and then finished second in the Great North Run in Newcastle.
Resilience of that magnitude is unique and if for no other reason than her consistency over the last six years, there could be no more deserving winner of the Olympic marathon.
Never a woman to conform, Loroupe has stood convention on its head in her build-up to Sydney. Instead of concentrating on long-distance road races, she has busied herself on the Grand Prix track circuit at distances upwards of 3,000 metres.
And the measure of the quality of her running is that at Nice she finished ahead of Sonia O'Sullivan in a 3,000-metres race won by Russia's Tatyana Tomashova in eight minutes 36.37 seconds. "There is more to the marathon than just running evenly," said the tiny Kenyan who weighs seven stone.
"To win, you've got to be able to get away from athletes and that is why track speed is so important to me." Sadly, Catherine McKiernan, who once held out so much promise of winning a medal in the marathon, is now restricted to the role of a mere onlooker. McKiernan, here as a RTE radio analyst, can only watch and think of what might have been.
Like the rest of us, she believes it is folly to narrow it down to two or three athletes, pointing to some notorious upsets in form at this level in recent years.
Yet one suspects she will be watching, in particular, for the Japanese runner Naoka Takahashi, who won the Asian championship in two hours 22 minutes 19 seconds, the quickest of the year, last March.
Lidia Simon of Romania is Europe's best hope of taking the title after a splendid 2:22.54 run in January. The feeling persists, however, that if Loroupe, only seventh on the list of the year's best times, gets it right in the middle stages she will go on to win.
