BEIJING — A spell of good weather held Sunday, providing women's marathoners and other endurance athletes at the Olympics with a largely smog-free environment for competition.
At the start of the marathon, temperatures were a mild 73 degrees Fahrenheit. Light rain fell during part of the morning, and a breeze picked up. Runners said they were prepared for harsher temperatures.
"I was expecting horrific heat and humidity," said Pauline Curley, an Irish marathoner. "It was a nice little drop of rain that fell, which helped a lot. Conditions were perfect."
High heat, humidity and smog all plagued the capital in the run-up to the Olympic Games, and organizers drew up desperate emergency plans for postponing events in case of unpleasant weather or high smog levels in Beijing, one of the world's most polluted cities.
Some distance runners voiced surprise at how Beijing cleared the air for the Olympics.
"I was here in April and it was a disaster," said Beata Naigambo, a Namibian marathoner who came in 26th Sunday with a time of 2:33:29, or six minutes and 45 seconds off the winning pace. "You couldn't even see the other building which was in front of you. ... The air was really dirty ... I was choking."
Naigambo, 28, said she was astonished at the difference in air quality.
"I don't know how they did it. But today it was perfect, seriously," she said.
China spent $17 billion in environmental clean-up programs to prepare for the Olympics. It shut down factories, moved steel mills out of Beijing, closed down neighborhood coal-fired power stations, and planted millions of trees. It also ordered some one million vehicles off city streets to pull air pollution levels down from awful to moderate levels.
A combination of light winds and regular rains left Beijing skies over the past week without the thick haze that normally cloaks the city, leaving the sun only as a faint orange orb in the sky.
The Ministry of Environmental Protection's air quality Web site shows air pollution index numbers since Aug. 11 that vary from good to excellent. On Friday, when skies were briefly cloudless and blue, the air pollution index dipped briefly to 17, one of the clearest days this year. It rose to 23 on Saturday and up to 60 on Sunday, still considered good.
Some athletes described the weather even as cool.
"I had trained for a very different climate in China. I felt cold," said Karina Perez, a Mexican marathon runner.
"It was a little bit windy," said Paula Radcliffe, a Briton who holds the world record in marathon but lagged in Sunday's race, "but you couldn't complain about the conditions."