I was just having fun, says triumphant Radcliffe

She was a winner again, the world's undisputed No 1.

For the second time the Big Apple had seen her come back triumphant.

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Three years ago it was from the trauma of her failure to finish at the Olympics; yesterday it was from a break since she won the world title in 2005 during which she gave birth to daughter Isla.

The nine-month-old was there at the finish yesterday, thrust into her mother's tired arms by father Gary after a performance by his wife that restores her status as the supreme marathon runner.

Mother superior. Radcliffe, 33, said: "Definitely I felt stronger coming off the pregnancy.

"It was harder to come back in 2004. I was just having fun today."

This was marathon racing at its most brutal. Radcliffe set the pace from gun to tape, her old Ethiopian rival Gete Wami behind her for all but 25 strides in the final mile when she moved ahead.

The response then from an indignant Radcliffe was devastating.

Somewhere deep within her she found a few more calories of energy, lifted her stockinged legs and ground Wami's challenge into the tarmac.

In those final few hundred yards she put 23 seconds between them to win in 2hr 23min 9sec, a second faster than in 2004 and 14 minutes inside the Olympic qualifying time she needed for Beijing.

It was the furthest they had been apart all morning, although Wami at least had the consolation of a £250,000 bonus as the first winner of the World Marathon Majors, a prize for the most successful runner in the five big city marathons over the past two years.

Just 35 days after winning the Berlin marathon she tried again, gave everything but found a Briton who she first raced in 1992 just too strong.

Radcliffe added: "It was tough at the end. My legs were tired. When Gete came alongside me I thought: 'Oh, no, this is not happening again'.

"I had years and years of her outsprinting me at the end of track races and I thought: 'She's not going to do it again in the marathon'.

"I was rather surprised when I looked behind at the finish and she was not there."

Sebastian Coe, head of the 2012 London Olympics organising committee, flew to New York to cheer on Radcliffe.

He said: "She's something else. Paula has transcended track and field.

"She is one of the biggest names in British sport of all time.

"She has had more impact on track and field than any single man in the last 15 or 16 seasons."

There were 37,000 starters, 3,000 of those from Britain, but our eyes were on just one and she was not hard to spot in black vest and briefs, accessoried in sunglasses, white gloves and knee-length stockings, a row of beads bobbing around her neck.

The bib declared her simply as Paula.

Nothing more was necessary to identify the woman who race organisers proclaimed last week as The Legend. New York abandoned its traditional practice of appointing pace-setters but Radcliffe knows no other way to run and fronted the race from the gun.

Immediately, they were running at a pace that threatened the course record.

But could she sustain it and could she shift Wami from her heels?

The others were quickly beyond contention, six seconds back after four miles, a minute and a half at 10 miles, and 2min 10sec at halfway.

When the leading pair turned off Queensborough Bridge into the wall of noise of Manhattan's crowded First Avenue with 16 miles behind them, that margin was 2min 45sec.

This, remember, was the strongest field New York had ever assembled being destroyed.

Defending New York champion Jelena Prokopcuka was eventually more than three minutes back in third and this year's world champion Catherine Ndereba a second shy of six minutes back in fifth.

At the front, it was primal stuff, two heavyweights going toe-to-toe, blow matching blow.

Radcliffe was doing the work, Wami freeloading off her, just as she had done so often. Radcliffe's face told the story of her effort, Wami's inscrutable.

Would it end in despair as in Seville in 1999, when Wami stole gold on the last lap of the World Championships 10,000 metres, or joy as in 2001, when Radcliffe destroyed Wami to win her first world cross-country title in the glutinous mud of Ostende?

In the end it proved an action replay of Radcliffe's previous appearance in New York in 2004 when it was Kenyan Susan Chepkemei who dogged her heels.

This time Radcliffe made her first surge just before entering Central Park, opening a 15m gap, but within a mile she had lost it.

Up each rise around the park Radcliffe tried again.

Each time Wami dropped a few paces and then recovered but the grimaces were beginning to show.

Then, under the ancient windows of the New York Athletic Club, came a cry: 'Wami's ahead.'

For a second or two Radcliffe's career hovered at a crossroads but as quickly as Wami took the lead, she gave it up.

It was over.

The men's race was won by Flora London Marathon winner Martin Lel, who edged out Abderrahim Goumri by 12 seconds in 2:09.04.