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Japan’s Noguchi, an Olympic gold medalist, drops out of Flora London Marathon

Posted March 1st, 2007 at 8:44 AM by David Monti

Section: News & Results, Marathons

Organizers of the Flora London Marathon announced today that 2004 Olympic Marathon gold medalist, Mizuki Noguchi of Japan, had withdrawn from their race scheduled for Sunday, April 22.

Her withdrawal was expected; she had been fighting an Achilles tendon injury which forced her to miss too much training.

“We are obviously very disappointed that Noguchi will not be joining us in London this spring, but reports from her coach were that from late January Mizuki was bothered with an inflamed Achilles tendon in her left leg, and this hampered her enough that she was barely running during this period,” said race director, Dave Bedford, in a media release. “Careful, steady treatment from her physio has more or less healed the injury, but, the short of it is that she has missed about a month of quality training.”

Noguchi, one of Japan’s most popular athletes, said, “I am really disappointed to miss this opportunity to run in the Flora London Marathon. I was very much looking forward to competing against the incredible field of women who will be in London in April, and of course I was also looking forward to running on the world record course. But having now missed a month of training, I feel I would not be anywhere near full strength by April 22nd.”

The women’s field remains strong, led by Berhane Adere, Galina Bogomolova, Zhou Chunxiu, Lornah Kiplagat and Gete Wami, amongst others. Reigning champion, Deena Kastor, is running the Boston Marathon instead.