When Julia Paternain took a surprise third in the women’s marathon in Tokyo to claim Uruguay’s first medal in World Athletics Championships history, it was winning the English Schools 3,000m title which flashed through her mind.
The 25-year-old’s family are from Uruguay but she moved to the UK with her parents aged two.
She won back-to-back national schools 3,000m titles in 2017 and 2018 and ran for Great Britain at the 2019 European Under-23s Championships, where she finished sixth in the 10,000m.
Ranked 288th in the world in the marathon and in only her second competitive race at the distance, Paternain was not expected to vie for a medal in Japan.
“My whole family is from Uruguay, but I was thinking back to the English Schools when I ran the 3k,” she told BBC Sport.
“I remembered the last 200m and this felt just like English Schools.”
Kenya’s Peres Jepchirchir, Olympic champion in Tokyo in 2021, won gold in a time of two hours 24 minutes 43 seconds, beating Ethiopia’s Tigst Assefa by two seconds in a thrilling sprint finish.
Paternain came home in 2:27.23 but said she was unsure what position she was in as she crossed the line.
“I was in shock. This is my second marathon and I was just trying to get from A to B and get to the finish line without my legs giving way,” said Paternain, whose father is a professor at Cambridge University.
“At halfway I realised I was in the top 12, maybe, and from then I was kind of picking people off.
“Usually in races you have people yelling at you that you are in this position, but everything was in Japanese so I had no idea where I was.
“When I came into the track I couldn’t see a soul, so I was like, ‘I have no clue where I am’.
“I knew I was somewhere in the top – I was assuming six or five. I didn’t know exactly where. I didn’t really want to think there was a medal, just in case there wasn’t.
“I was terrified that that wasn’t the finish and that someone was going to be behind me, and I was going to stop and I had another lap to go.
“I’m a little bit clueless when I run so I wanted to make sure. I was trying to check with the officials that was definitely the finish.”
