It was a welcome case of mistaken identity. Grete Waitz, winner of nine New York Marathons, recalled being stopped by a member of the public several years ago and asked whether she was Paula Radcliffe. “Only in my dreams,” she replied.

The reverence afforded Radcliffe by her peers is well earned, but she suffered her first defeat in a marathon outside of the Olympic Games yesterday. It was far from the strongest field she had faced, but the hamstring problem she had struggled with beforehand undid her chances of winning a fourth ING New York City Marathon.

The way she stopped and vented her agony after finishing fourth, clasping her left leg, proved that this was another heroic effort, but also made you wonder how long her body can withstand the marathon toil. “Maybe I should have come back steadier and just written the year off,” she said afterwards.

Radcliffe has been so unlucky with injuries that you have to be an optimist to believe she will make it to London 2012 in perfect health. However, the good news for her is that age and motherhood are obviously no barriers to success. Derartu Tulu, of Ethiopia, won the race 17 years after taking the first of her two Olympic gold medals at 10,000 metres. Ludmila Petrova, of Russia, was second at the age of 41. Tulu is on the way back after having a second child, while Petrova took seven years off to raise her children, who are now teenagers.

There is life beyond the track, as Radcliffe acknowledged before this race, and it may be that we do not see her run a marathon in 2010 as she concentrates on family life.

She had previewed the race by saying that she loves running and retirement will have to be forced upon her. “It will be my body that doesn’t want to go out and train, or mentally just not being able to get through all the injury downs,” she said.

This was another of those downs. Radcliffe is still unbeatable if fit, but that is an increasingly bigger “if”. However, what is unquestionable is the mental toughness of a woman who limped through the Olympics in agony last year. New York has often been her comeback-cum-catharsis, a post-Athens, post-Beijing pick-me-up, but not yesterday. The winning time of 2hr 28min 52sec was almost five minutes down on Radcliffe’s mark last year.

Radcliffe took another 35 seconds to bring down the curtain on an awful year. She had surgery to remove a bunion in March, which involved breaking and resetting three toes, and missed the World Championships because of a problem with her right hamstring. She then missed the World Half Marathon Championships with tonsillitis and developed another problem two weeks ago, which she described as a “tweak at the other end of the [left] hamstring tendon behind the knee”. A cortisone injection on Friday and homeopathic treatment failed to cure it.

The modest field in New York got thinner still after just six kilometres. Yuri Kano, a diminutive Japanese runner, and Salina Kosgei, the gangly Kenyan winner of the Boston Marathon, came together. It was a case of the smaller they are, the harder they fall, as Kano hit the tarmac. Both bounced up, but while Kosgei maintained her place in the six-strong leading group, Kano fell away.

Radcliffe’s greatest battle, as ever, was with herself. “There’s very few people who go a whole year training, or even their marathon preparation, without some little hiccup or niggle or drama along the way,” she said beforehand. The drama is in her DNA.

In the absence of this year’s top ten, there were some new faces to contend with. Foremost was Christelle Daunay. She had not bothered the scorers for much of her career, but took 2½ minutes off her own French record when she finished third in Paris this year. With the pace some way off the record many had hoped for, the dark horse stood shoulder to shoulder with the thoroughbred.

The first signs of Radcliffe’s stress came crossing the Queensboro Bridge into Manhattan. Daunay got away briefly. Kosgei was bleeding and dropped away with four miles to go. That left four mums contemplating the mother of all finishes. Tulu was strongest and claimed her first marathon win since London in 2001.

The ups and the downs

2002 Sets world record of 2hr 17min 18sec in Chicago and wins in London.

2003 Sets the world record of 2hr 15min 25sec in London.

2004 Drops out of the Olympic marathon in Athens after 36 kilometres, a result of illness and injury. Wins in New York.

2005 Wins in London and becomes world champion in Helsinki.

2006 Injury sees her miss London and the Commonwealth Games.

2007 Suffers a double stress fracture of the lower spine after giving birth to Isla. Comes back to win in New York.

2008 Suffers stress fracture of the left femur and is only 23rd at the Olympics as a result. Returns by winning in New York.

2009 Fourth in New York in 2hr 29min 27sec.