event of the year.

International Race Weekend, which will involve around 1,500 competitors over three days, kicks off with the Front Street Mile races, starting at 7.30 p.m.

Tomorrow morning the 10K will start from the south-east gate of the National Stadium and on Sunday hundreds of marathon and half-marathon runners will set off from Front Street.

Last year's marathon winners, Yugoslav Srba Nikolic and Ukrainian Yelena Plastinina, will be out to defend their titles.

And Plastinina will be looking to repeat her achievement of a year ago when she scooped $13,000, the biggest prize won in Race Weekend history, after breaking the women's marathon record with a time of two hours, 40 minutes and 50 seconds.

Tonight's series of eight races, a traditional crowd-puller on the Hamilton waterfront, begins with the girls under-12 mile.

It builds up to the highlight of the evening, the Invitational Mile, when a field of nine elite runners will battle it out for the $1,000 first prize.

No miler in the history of the event has broken the four-minute barrier and again a $10,000 bonus is on offer to the first to do it.

American Karl Paranya has the quickest personal best of those contesting the main event, 3:56.21. He will face tough competition from the other three in the field to have broken four minutes, Allan Klassen of Canada, Stephan Forcade of France and American Jeremy Huffman.

But the crowd will doubtless save their biggest cheers for Bermuda's own Commonwealth Games star Terrance Armstrong, whose stated ambition is to be the first from the Island to run a sub four-minute mile.

The 10K field is all the weaker for the absence of last year's winner Zambian Charles Mulinga, but that will improve the chances of England's Paul Freary in his bid for a fifth successive Race Weekend title.

Freary has won the past three half-marathons and in 1995 he won the Invitational Mile.

Canadian Christian Weber will provide strong competition and knows the course, having finished third last year. England's Dave Lewis and US marathon record holder Jerry Lawson should also be challengers.

Meanwhile, Lynn Patchett, one of Bermuda's top women runners, has opted out of tonight's mile.

But Patchett, who finished second to Karen Adams in 5:30.8 in last year's event, has registered for the marathon.

Patchett said her training for the 26.2-mile event, on which she wants to concentrate this year, was not compatible with training to give her best in the mile.

And nothing less than her best form would be good enough to compete against Adams, she added.

"Karen is such a strong miler and she beat me by nearly 10 seconds last year and that's a long way in the mile,'' said Patchett.

Patchett is a strong performer over the longer distances too and was first resident to finish in the half-marathon in 1998, in a time of 1:28:48.

She is now in training for the Boston marathon in April, but knows that on Sunday she will face stiff competition from local rivals such as Jane Christie, Tanis Browning-Shelp and Rhianon Pedro.

Of the overseas runners, Plastinina's leading rivals are likely to be two Russians, Lutsia Beliaeva, whose personal best is 2:30:25 and the 1997 Russian marathon champion Anfissa Kosatheva.

Men's champion Nikolic will be taking on his New York-based training partner, Ethiopian Alan Kahsay, who has run 2:16:00.

The 1998 Russian marathon champion Andrey Shalogin and his compatriot Edward Toukbatullin lead a strong challenge from Eastern Europe.

Illness has ruined what could have been a memorable weekend for local schoolboy Geoffrey Smith, the red-hot favourite for tonight's boys under-12 mile. He has had to withdraw after suffering a bout of flu.

Roll of Honour, Mile entries, see Page 18