Hailey Haining is the athlete who got away. Kicked and trampled by two horses when she was 15, she still bears the scars, and has been bruised and battered in her athletics career ever since.

"It was at Dumfries agricultural show," she recalled yesterday. "One horse knocked me down. The other stood on me in several places. There's still very little sensation, just scar tissue. My hamstring was very nearly pulled off the back of my leg.

"I'd brand new jeans on, really crisp and hard, quite tight in those days. So it was just a compression injury as it galloped over me. It made me cautious of horses I don't know, and I never wanted to go into equine practice after that."

But it didn't deter her from becoming a vet: "Apparently I said I wanted to do that when I was four."

She gained a Phd and is a clinical pathologist at Glasgow Veterinary School. The worst that has happened in her day job is "a few scratches from cats," she says.

But recurrent injuries emphat-ically derailed a career which had seen her billed as successor to Liz McColgan in the days when she was beating the current world marathon record-holder, Paula Radcliffe. Haining set a UK record on the track at 1000 metres 22 years ago, and in 1991 was seventh in the world junior cross country, then best ever by a Brit. Radcliffe, a year younger, was 15th.

Radcliffe and Mara Yamauchi are absent from the Flora London Marathon tomorrow, but have booked their places. So it's between the 36-year-old Haining and Liz Yelling for the remaining marathon place in Beijing.

Haining's best of 2:30.43, in Berlin last year, is Scotland's third fastest behind McColgan and Kathy Butler, and it is one second faster than Yelling's best, in London last year. Yelling, however, is 89 seconds faster at the half distance.

"I don't focus on Beijing every waking moment," said Haining. "I keep it in my peripheral vision. I've a job to do and a life to get on with. I also have that injury spectre behind me, so I've never focused on it. I never ever thought I'd go to the Olympics. It's not something that's going to define my athletics career. I feel lucky I have that attitude.

"I thought about it when I was a teenager, but the injuries were a bucket of cold water. When I gave up in 2000 to study for her Phd I thought it was the end of my racing. I didn't think I'd have the confidence to put the effort in to be injured all the time."

However, having finished 25th in the 2005 World Championship marathon (she helped Britain win World Cup bronze) she now knows it is possible.

But she won't be stalking Yelling up the road tomorrow. "I may not even see Liz. She could be off like a rat up a drainpipe at the start. I'm prepared for that. I have to concentrate on what I think will get me round the course. I don't want to hit the wall, have that horrible few miles using every ounce of energy you have to drag one foot past the other.

"I want to walk away feeling I gave it everything I'd got, used all the energy I had at the right time."

Does she never envy Radcliffe, think the records and millions might have been hers? She laughs: "I honestly never think about it. I don't have the time. Besides, Paula has a very nomadic existence and I don't think that would suit me at all."

Dan Robinson, the leading UK male, hopes to go to Beijing via Orkney. Commonwealth bronze medallist in 2006 and second European in the 2005 World Championships, he has the men's qualifying time from his 11th place at last year's World Championships in Osaka.

He has had a croft on Stronsay for four years. "My wife loves scuba diving and we went to Scapa Flow. We went on a day trip to the island and saw this little croft. We love it there, and I am going back on Monday morning after the race.

"We are there for about six or seven weeks a year. In summer it's a great place to train, particularly in June, July August - fantastic beaches, trails and tracks, but it's pretty windy."

Having qualified in Osaka he merely has to show decent form, but his domestic life could have been better planned.

"My wife, Jess, is expecting a baby on August 23, the day before the Beijing marathon," said Robinson. "I will be leaving her when she is eight months pregnant, and off to the holding camp."