It is a sign of Paula Radcliffe’s blossoming confidence that she believes a Saturday night at the movies in Leicestershire poses more of a problem than polluted skies in Beijing. Fresh from winning the New York City Marathon for a second time, the asthmatic said that she was unconcerned about the threat posed by the air quality in China, but revealed that she was leaving no stone unturned in her quest to win Olympic gold next year. “We made a decision and got burnt,” she said in the first admission that she had made a mistake in the preamble to her Athens trauma.

Her approach means that, unlike 2004, when she went her own way and was damned by a lack of medical back-up when she suffered a leg injury in Seville, Spain, this time she will attend the Great Britain training camp in Macau in the build-up to the 2008 Games. “I think if things had gone well and I’d not got injured, I’d have been calm and relaxed, but when I got injured I needed better access [to medical support],” she said. “Even Macau is not ideal for endurance running.” The unsaid subtext was that it is still better than Seville.

Radcliffe is in form and ready to do whatever it takes to add an Olympic gold medal to her list of achievements. That entails careful monitoring of her breathing. She takes Flixotide day and night and uses a Ventolin inhaler if that fails. “If I take it [Flixotide], then I should not have any need to take the inhaler,” she said. “You have certain triggers and I know which mine are. It’s not always pollution. I take a peak-flow monitor with me and so I just up the dosage when I need to. I’m not worried about Beijing because the worst attack I’ve had was sitting in a cinema in Loughborough.”

Radcliffe could barely stop grinning the day after her dominant victory in New York, when she blew away a field including the world champion, Catherine Ndereba. She celebrated with champagne and ice cream, appeared on CBS, CNN and ABC yesterday morning and was planning to show Isla, her daughter, who was born in January, around New York before heading home to Monaco. Much has been made of Isla’s potential influence on Radcliffe, with many predicting it would diminish her talents, but the 33-year-old was adamant that she is tougher as a result of her 27-hour labour of love. “I am not lighter than I was before, but I am leaner and my core is stronger,” she said. “Cardiovascularly, I felt good and under control.”

She also knows she has been lucky with Isla and gave an insight into her daily routine. “I was prepared for it to be much harder,” she said, revealing that she often sleeps in until 9am before dropping Isla off at a crèche and then going for a run. “Then I have a shower, some lunch, a nap and go out training from five until seven. Then I get her ready for bed and get my dinner. She’s a good sleeper.”

Certainly, Radcliffe’s domestic life had rendered her a contented figure. She believes she has more speed to come but is happy to be some way off her peak as everything is geared towards burying the memory of Athens in Beijing. The news that she will be joining the Britain camp is significant as it proves she is prepared to learn from past errors. Having had a terrible summer of discontent with postbirth injuries, she said that this time she needs the insurance that comes with the team’s facilities.

On the road, everything looks good. Having made the Olympic qualifying time with about 14 minutes to spare, she may well not run a marathon again until Beijing and she received an additional boost by beating Gete Wami, of Ethiopia, in a sprint finish. “Sprinting at the end of a marathon is different from sprinting at the end of a 10k, so that has given me a lot of confidence,” she said.

Savvy enough to know that, had she not won in New York, the whispering scaremongers would have been writing her off, she said: “I don’t feel I had anything to prove to anyone, but it was important to come here and win.”

No need to prove anything, perhaps, but Radcliffe’s star quality is such that she did it anyway.