Ireland’s 2005 European Indoor Athletics Championships 3000m gold medallist Alistair Cragg will make his marathon debut at the 115th edition of the Boston Marathon on 18 April.

Alistair Cragg

Cragg, who holds the Irish 10,000m record with 27:39.55 and has also run 5000m in 13:07.10, both times being clocked in 2007, has the initial target of running under 2:16 so that he has the qualifying time for the World Championships later this year and also the 2012 Olympic GamesHowever, the Irish record for the classic distance, which has stood at 2:09:15 to John Treacy since 1988, may not be beyond the pale.

Cragg has struggled with injuries in recent years and failed to finish the 5000m final at both the 2008 Olympic Games and the 2010 European Athletics Championships but recently finished second at the RNR Arizona Half, in the USA, in 63:22 to show he’s injury-free again.

He could potentially be the leading European runner in the famous race as most of the continent’s other top marathon men, including the three medallists from the 2010 European Athletics Championships in Barcelona last summer, have decided to run in the Virgin London Marathon the day before.

Russia’s Galina Bogomolova tops the Boston elite women’s entry list with her time of 2:20:46, which she set at the 2006 Chicago Marathon. It will be her first marathon since she gave birth to her daughter Kseniya last February.

She lies fourth on the European all-time list for the event, behind Great Britain’s world record holder Paula Radcliffe (2:15:25), Germany’s Irina Mikitenko (2:19:19) and her compatriot Liliya Shobukhova, who took Bogomolova’s Russian record when she ran 2:20:25 in the Chicago Marathon last October.

Bogomolova, now 33, was fourth in the 2006 European Athletics Championships 10,000m and also the 2002 SPAR European Cross Country Championships silver medallist but failed to finish the marathon at both the 2007 World Championships and 2008 Olympic Games.

Other European women making the trip across the Atlantic in two months time include the Russian pair of Tatyana Pushkareva and Silvia Skvortsova, who have bests of 2:26:14 and 2:26:24 respectively; and also Ukraine’s Yuliya Ruban, who has run 2:27:44.