BY JIMMY GOLEN

AP Sports Writer

BOSTON

"There's no going back at this point," said Mary Wittenberg, the president of the New York Road Runners, which organizes the New York Marathon. "We've taken the trials to a whole new level. I think we're shortchanging everybody if we don't find a way to build on it."

Although trials are common in most Olympic sports, including other running events, the nature of the 26.2-mile marathon makes it difficult to add another race into the athletic calendar. Virtually every other country picks its marathon team by committee; Boston men's winner Robert Cheruiyot of Kenya and women's winner Dire Tune of Ethiopia are both hoping their performance on Monday will earn them a trip to Beijing.

"That is complicated," said Cheruiyot, a four-time Boston winner who was left off the Kenyan team for Athens. "I may be there; I may not. But I hope to be there."

Less complicated is a race where the top three finishers make the team.

And that's the allure of the trials.

After decades of holding distinct, but largely ignored, marathons to choose the Olympic teams--for the 2004 Games, the trials were in St. Louis and Birmingham, Ala.--USA Track and Field assigned the Beijing qualifiers to the country's most prestigious races.

But the men didn't traverse the five boroughs along the traditional New York route; nor did the women head from Hopkinton to Boston on Patriots Day as thousands of runners have done for a century. Instead, the would-be Olympians followed specially designed courses, a day before the traditional races.

"I think it put American distance running in a whole new light," Boston Athletic Association executive director Guy Morse said yesterday. "U.S. athletes deserve this sort of stage."

Deena Kastor, Magdalena Lewy Boulet and Blake Russell qualified for Beijing on Sunday with their 1-2-3 finish in Boston. Ryan Hall, Dathan Ritzenhein and Brian Sell earned spots on the U.S. men's team with their top-three finishes in New York in November.