GB trio shine in Great Wall test

The Great Wall course is one of marathon running's most daunting

Britain had three top-10 finishers in China's Great Wall Marathon as Salvador Calvo smashed the record in one of the world's toughest 26-mile races.

The Spaniard's time (3hrs 23mins and 10 secs) took two minutes off the old mark and was 15 ahead his nearest rival.

Jane White (4:42:24) finished fourth in the women's race, with Jeremy Redford (4:02:07) and Peter Anderson (4:03:28) seventh and eighth in the men's.

The event involved running 3,800 steps on the Great Wall in 33C temperatures.

Some compare the difficulty of the race to running at an altitude of around 3,000m.

Calvo, 44, who trains in the mountains near his home in Leon in northern Spain, said: "I'd rate it as maybe my best performance."

He signed up for the race just three days before the deadline after coming across it while surfing the internet.

"I was looking for something different, and this looked different. I didn't come looking for a record, but I thought the course might suit me," he said.

The first woman home was Sara Winter of New Zealand, who finished in fifth overall in another course record of 3:50:21.