“The sooner we get rid of losing, the happier everyone will be” - Philip
Roth, The Great American Novel
The indelible memory of this sporting year will be of Paula Radcliffe. She
will either win gold in a cathartic, tear-inducing triumph or be damned as a
choker, just another athlete who sacrificed her talent on the altar of
heroic failure. This is the madness of the British jury.
“Yeah, they’ll think I’m a failure,” she says. “People associate me with
stopping in Athens. It does annoy me, but that’s life. I wouldn’t say it
festers away, but it motivates me. I’ve not performed disastrously in
Olympics, but I haven’t achieved what I wanted. There’s plenty of burning
desire to make up for Athens.”
Radcliffe is a living legend, the world record-holder in the marathon, a
Commonwealth, European and world champion. Perhaps it is our obsession with
defeat that means that her few setbacks are more ingrained in the layman’s
consciousness, the image of her crying on the kerbside after pulling out of
the 2004 Olympic marathon even making the back cover of her autobiography.
The postAthens message boards shocked her. “I was hurt by the injustice and
often outright hatred of some of the posters,” she says. “Don’t they think
that people have feelings? I’d say it didn’t hurt, but it did. I reached the
point with journalists and Joe Public where I had to accept not everyone is
going to like me.”
What’s not to like? Radcliffe is a rare mix of kryptonite and vulnerability.
Athens was traumatic; injury and a reaction to antiinflammatory drugs
ruining her victory hopes and condemning her to four years of revisiting the
scene.
Much has happened since. She has had a daughter, Isla, now 15 months old and
sitting on her knee as we speak in a marquee in Battersea Park, Central
London, and has suffered foot and back injuries. She ended her 21-month
sabbatical last September at the BUPA Great North Run and came second. Her
foot locked up, so she had oil injected into the joint – and went and won
the New York City Marathon in November.
A toe injury forced her out of last month’s Flora London Marathon and, when we
meet, she has a hip problem. Does she get paranoid about these pains with
the Beijing Olympics three months away? “I do, but I accept there will be
bumps along the road,” Radcliffe says. “The toe was a nightmare because it
went so long before being diagnosed. The joint actually blocked up running
New York. I remember not feeling comfortable running down the hill. Gary
said, ‘Why did you slow down so much?’ I didn’t know. The pain didn’t
register. I thought it was my back, but watching the video I was actually
running with a limp.”
Gary, of course, is Gary Lough, her husband, coach and mentor, once vilified
for a public “domestic” after the 10,000 metres final at the 2001 World
Championships in Edmonton, Canada. “Why the f*** did you do that?” Lough
asked her in reference to her tactics. The scene was watched by millions on
television. The next day Lough’s mother phoned him. “You are an a***hole,”
she said. Utterly devoted and as obsessed as his wife, Lough is the model
father and remains Radcliffe’s anchor.
Radcliffe does not mind being controversial, either, as the “EPO cheats out”
banner she held during Olga Yegorova’s heat in Edmonton proved. Seven years
on, the fight against drugs has moved to the courts and Marion Jones is
serving a jail term. “It’s good that people are being caught, it’s good it’s
come out, although it took the US Government and FBI to get involved, but
that needs to happen,” Radcliffe says. “Carl Lewis said this week that
doping should be a crime, but I would go further than that. I would make it
criminal to supply drugs and to encourage young athletes to take them.”
Another solution, she believes, is blood profiling and she is urging the IAAF
to take samples from athletes over the course of their careers and thereby
identify changes. This, she feels, would help to combat issues such as blood
transfusions and growth hormone. “We’ve got to go down the blood profiling
route,” she says. “I started doing it with a guy from the IAAF last year. I
handed in all my blood tests because I get them done regularly, so he could
understand it more. Certainly, in endurance events, you can say, ‘That level
is suspect, we can’t ban you but you’re not allowed to compete.’ ” Despite
such passionate views, Radcliffe is irritated by the sport’s bad press.
“It’s not a serious problem here at all,” she says. “The UK is one of the
cleanest countries out there. I know that.” But globally, this is a pivotal
time in the fight against drugs: the case against Trevor Graham, the United
States sprint coach, is scheduled to begin this month; Justin Gatlin, the
Olympic 100 metres champion, is awaiting an appeal verdict from the Court of
Arbitration for Sport on his four-year ban; and Dwain Chambers, the Great
Britain sprinter, is heading back towards athletics after an ill-fated
sojourn in rugby league.
“We have to invest more in the testing because at the moment there’s probably
more money going into cheating than there is being pumped into antidoping,”
Radcliffe says. “It annoys me the profile Dwain is still getting. There are
youngsters coming through, like Christine [Ohuruogu], Nicola Sanders,
Phillips [Idowu], why aren’t they getting that? Don’t make him a hero.” How
would she feel if Chambers were part of the Britain team in Beijing? “I
don’t think that’s going to happen,” Radcliffe says. “He served his ban and
should, by the rules, be allowed back, but I object to him cashing in on the
media side [a book is being written]. I’m with Darren Campbell – I’d be
annoyed if I was part of a relay team and he lost me my medal.”
Isla wants the tape recorder, but Radcliffe says something to her in French –
they live in Monaco – and she wanders off. “She needs a lot of entertaining
during the day, but she crashes at around 7.45pm and sleeps through until
8.30am. I give her breakfast, drop her at the crèche and then do the main
session of the day. She naps while I nap in the afternoon. She makes my core
exercises more difficult because she likes to push me over, but the only
real change is Gary does fewer evening runs with me.”
Radcliffe, 34, wants to have another child after the Beijing Games –
“definitely, although we’ve not planned when exactly, but probably only one
more”. She looks a picture of contentment, but there is still that one piece
of the jigsaw missing. She is a happily married mother and has run three of
the four fastest marathons in history, but this will be her fourth Olympics
and she is yet to stand on the podium.
Will Beijing’s well-documented pollution hinder her prospects? “It’s been
overhyped by the media,” she says. “After Mara [Yamauchi, Radcliffe’s fellow
British marathon runner] did the Olympic test run, she said we’re all going
to have sore throats afterwards, runny eyes and runny noses. But I don’t
think it’s going to affect you like the heat and humidity.”
She will not be wearing a mask, either. “The media got the wrong end of that
because we were never meant to compete in them,” Radcliffe says. “If we get
there, the air quality is bad and they say you’ll feel more comfortable if
you wear a mask then I’ll wear one. I’m not bothered about looking stupid
walking around the city. You could jog in them, but not run a marathon. They
were never intended for that.”
After her trip to London, Radcliffe will return to her training base in Font
Romeu, France. She will try to fit in another race before Beijing, “although
it’s not paramount or necessary”. She will spend 12 days at the Britain
training camp in Macau and fly to Beijing two days before the marathon on
August 17. Given that she has made it to only two leading championships
since 2002, she is trying to be fatalistic, but she is Paula Radcliffe,
national icon, multitasking mother and the linchpin of Britain’s Olympic
hopes.
“I’m not good at accepting down days,” she says. “I can say I’ll be
philosophical if it goes wrong in Beijing, but I don’t believe it – if
it happens again it will be a disaster.”
Paula Radcliffe joins Tesco in celebrating its seventh year of supporting
Cancer Research UK’s Race for Life. Enter Race for Life 2008 by visiting www.raceforlife.org
or phone 0871 641 2282.
The life of a long-distance runner
Highs
London Marathon, 2003 Followed up her all-conquering 2002 season by
running a staggering 2hr 15min 25sec, a world record that ranks with any.
New York City Marathon, 2004 It was barely two months since the
nightmare of Athens, but she dug deep and held off Susan Chepkemei, of
Kenya, to win.
World Championships, 2005 Six years after winning a silver in the
10,000 metres, finally won world gold in the marathon in Helsinki, a minute
clear of the rest.
Lows
Olympic Games, 2004 A stomach problem follows a leg injury and she is
forced to stop after 23 miles. “I couldn't put one foot in front of the
other,” the hot favourite said.
World Championships, 2001 Finished 0.08sec off a medal in Edmonton,
Canada, after changing tactics and had a public spat with her husband
afterwards.
Albuquerque, 2003 Out for a training run, Radcliffe collided with a
cyclist, hit the ground, disclocated her jaw and suffered multiple abrasions
to her face.
