Kimberly Smith eyes Olympic marathon

New Zealand's Kimberly Smith says she will keep up her middle-distance career while planning to run in the marathon at the 2012 Olympics.

Smith will debut at the distance in New York, in the world's highest-profile city marathon, in a week.

The US-based Smith, ninth in the 10,000m at the Beijing Games, has never raced further than 10km but believes her Olympics future is best served in the endurance race.

She still plans to run the 10,000m at next year's world championship in Berlin and will only start specialising in the 42km race as the London games start to loom.

New York marathon organisers are happy to spruik Smith's chances. New York Road Runners president Mary Wittenberg said she had been encouraging Smith for some time to convert to the marathon. "I believe the marathon to be her distance and I believe Kim can be as good as marathoner as we have ever seen."

Smith watched last year's race from a pace car and said New York was a drawcard for Smith.

"I feel like a lot of people wait too long to step up and run marathons and I wanted to do it while I was still relatively young," she said.