Her sport may have been tarnished in recent times, but it was in keeping with her image as the golden girl of global athletics that Carolina Klüft applied the spit and polish. Her status as the most gifted all-round sportswoman in the world gives her words added impact and, although she is blissfully unaware of the Dwain Chambers saga, she has sledgehammer-blunt views on the issue of doping.

“If someone put something in my drink and I tested positive even though I was innocent, I could leave my country forever and people would never believe me,” she said as she prepared for the Norwich Union Indoor Grand Prix in Birmingham this afternoon. “They would always think of me as a cheater. They would spit on me in the street. In Sweden you cheat and you’re a loser.”

This carries its own problems for a woman whose easy manner and harpsichord smile are at odds with what sounded close to paranoia about having her drinks spiked. “It’s not acceptable to cheat in Sweden and that’s a good mentality, but sometimes it makes me scared, too,” she said. “I keep my [water] bottle close to me because my life depends on nobody doing something to me. It’s a worry because I don’t want to lose my life.”

Kelly Sotherton is one of the few to have a prayer of ending Klüft’s heptathlon hegemony. It is 19 events since the Swede lost, but Sotherton came within 17 points in the pentathlon at last year’s European Indoor Championships at Birmingham’s National Indoor Arena, where the pair will lock horns today in a three-event challenge comprising 60 metres hurdles, long jump and 400 metres.

Sotherton knows the bitter sensation of losing out to someone who has served a ban for doping. Lyudmila Blonska, the Ukrainian athlete, took silver at the World Championships last August with Sotherton third. “I’m for everything that cleans up our sport and it’s unfortunate this has all happened now and not two years ago when he [Chambers] came back,” Sotherton said. “Unfortunately, we have a two-year ban, when I’d go for life, but we have to get on with it.”

And so to the track. Klüft married in Scotland last September and has ensured that the grapevine has throbbed with rumour by suggesting that she may not compete in the heptathlon at the Beijing Olympics. She said yesterday that she will make a decision in the spring, but is contemplating doing the long jump instead, or both. Sotherton said that she is likely to shelve plans to join Klüft in the sandpit until after next year’s World Championships in Berlin.

“In the winter I felt empty,” Klüft said. “I have not had the motivation that you need in order to be good in all events. I wanted to open the door and think in a new kind of way. I’m not sure what I will do. My plan is to do the indoor season and see if my motivation comes back, but before I quit I definitely want to do one or two events, not seven.”

Sotherton has no doubt that Klüft, still only 25, will be reenergised by the World Indoors. “I expect her to be there and I’d like her to be,” she said. “What she has done in the last five years is amazing and I’m sure her motivation will return.”

The good news for those who can surf the tide of cynicism drowning athletics is that Klüft is not hanging up her spikes for marital bliss with her new pole-vaulter husband, Patrick Kristianson. “I am not retiring after Beijing,” she said. “I love being on the track, it’s just my motivation for the heptathlon has been going down.”

Klüft and Sotherton are close in an event known for its camaraderie, so it was no surprise to hear the former say that she would like her British rival to succeed her as the best in the world.

The clever money, though, is on both lining up in the heptathlon in Beijing.

At the end of a torrid week, a reminder of the alchemic powers is provided by a look into Klüft’s past – the shy target for playground bullies who gained a sense of self-worth through sport. As the friends exhibited their exasperation with questions about drugs and Darfur – “I’m not there to talk about human rights, I’m there to perform,” Sotherton said – it will be refreshing to get athletics back on track. For an afternoon at least.

The rivals

Carolina Klüft Sweden
Age 25
PB heptathlon 7,032 points
Best displays World champion (2003, 2005, 2007), Olympic champion (2004), European champion (2002, 2006)

Kelly Sotherton Great Britain
Age 31
PB heptathlon 6,547
Best displays World bronze (2007), Olympic bronze (2004)

Head-to-heads

Olympic Games, Athens, 2004
1 Klüft 6,952
3 Sotherton 6,424

European Indoor Championships, Madrid, 2005
1 Klüft 4,948
2 Sotherton 4,733

European Indoor Championships, Birmingham, 2007
1 Klüft 4,944
2 Sotherton 4,927

World Championships, Osaka, 2007
1 Klüft 7,032
3 Sotherton 6,510