KEY POINTS:
Five-time world mountain running champion Jonathan Wyatt plans to hit the road in pursuit of his Olympic ambitions.
The 33-year-old New Zealander is targeting the marathon in Beijing in 2008 and believes a top 10 finish is not beyond him. Wyatt has dominated the global mountain running scene for the past decade, winning the fifth of his world titles in front of more than 12,000 spectators in Wellington last year.
But the Italian-based athlete is prepared to put mountain running on the back-burner for the next couple of years to focus on the marathon. "Everything you do in the sport is building towards the Olympics," said Wyatt.
"I would like to be able to get the qualifying time next year. I've targeted a couple of marathons in the spring and I would like to run either Hamburg or Zurich. It is a bit frustrating because Athletics New Zealand has not yet set a qualifying time. Should I get the qualification time, I would like to do a big city marathon, maybe New York next autumn."
Wyatt has performed at the highest level on the track, road and country but it is mountain running where he has enjoyed the most success.
He was thwarted in his attempt to win a sixth world title in Turkey in September when he was attacked by two dogs two days before the race. He was hospitalised but still competed, winning silver.
Wyatt, who attended the same school in Lower Hutt as Commonwealth 1500m champion Nick Willis, made his Olympic debut over 5000m in Atlanta in 1996 but later concentrated on mountain running. In 2004 he made his second Olympic appearance in the marathon, finishing a respectable 21st in Athens.
Wyatt, who lives in the Italian Dolomites with his girlfriend, Antonella Confortola, an Olympic cross-country skiing bronze medallist, plans to scale down his mountain running next year and increase his training load to 180km a week to gain maximum fitness in the marathon.
With a personal best of 2 hours 13 minutes, he is almost 10 minutes shy of the world record but championship marathons rarely produce quick times.
"I've got to be looking to improve on Athens," said Wyatt of his hopes for Beijing. "The top 20 has to be a minimum aim and anything can happen in a championship. My dream would be a top 10 finish. I was very pleased with the way I ran in Athens and believe I can better that performance."
But he denied Beijing would be the swansong of his career. "I never like to look more than two years ahead."
