Athletics has always secured impressive television viewing figures throughout the world but this year the sports’ allure has reached new heights.

In the USA, such was the impact of Paula Radcliffe’s stunning World best Marathon run in Chicago last weekend that the race report was the third item on CNN and NBC television news, behind the devastating and tragic Bali bomb blast and the ‘war on terror’, and significantly in sporting terms, coming ahead of the news of the Baseball World Series play-offs.

In Britain, Radcliffe’s run also underlined the public’s flagging interest in Formula 1 motor racing, when ‘as-live’ coverage of the final grand prix of the season on the commercial broadcaster ITV, was beaten by live coverage of the Chicago marathon on the UK’s public-service broadcaster, the BBC.

The corporation’s coverage of the Chicago marathon, beginning at 1.30pm, was watched by an average of 2.2 million viewers, with a peak of 3.5 million, equal to one in four people watching television, as the race ended.

Elsewhere this year, in Latin America, television networks have for the first time covered live athletics from Europe, following the exploits of Felix Sanchez of the Dominican Republic and Mexico’s Ana Guevara, the first Latin American athletes ever to take a share of the IAAF Golden League Jackpot.

Japan has always been besotted with the Marathon, and while viewing figures for Olympic champion Naoko Takahashi’s run in Berlin last month are still to be announced, last year a sensational 53.5 % of the Japanese TV watching public tuned into to watch her cross the finish, in what was then a new world best time.

Go back a few more years, and during the last night of the 1998 European championships in Budapest, one quarter of the entire population of Finland tuned into watch the men’s javelin final!