Graphic: The gold rush

Paula Radcliffe will line up for the Olympic marathon here in Beijing on Sunday. It is not a task that any of us who have been breathing in this air for two weeks would relish, although Steve Cram, my BBC colleague and a former 1,500 metres world record-holder who runs five miles most days, says that we are all big wusses and that it is fine out there. Actually, I am getting used to the air tasting odd, the putrid smells that suddenly strike the nostrils and to the heat — but I do not think that I would ever get used to not seeing the sun.

Whatever the weather, Radcliffe will be on the start line at 7.30am local time. To most of the experts she is making peace with the past more than racing for an Olympic medal. And the same experts say that if we are looking at British interest we should talk about Mara Yamauchi, Radcliffe’s team-mate who won the Osaka Marathon in January and has spent most of the year training in Tokyo, where she has lived, with a climate similar to that in Beijing. Her personal best of 2hr 25min 10sec may be ten minutes slower than Radcliffe’s, but no one is predicting that this marathon will be about records so much as coping with conditions.

So why has Yamauchi had one column inch for every 20 devoted to Radcliffe? Why have we been keeping up to date with Radcliffe’s rehabilitation across every available media outlet in the past few weeks, while few of us can recall seeing Yamauchi’s face? Because Radcliffe is one of those athletes in whom we have invested emotionally. David Beckham, Colin Montgomerie, Tim Henman — you can think of others — have been subjected to an emotional dependence on our part. We view their careers irrationally.

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Why didn't they ring me up before they decided to hold the Olympic Games in Beijing in August? Don't do it, I'd have said

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We “bought in” to Radcliffe a long time ago. This is her fourth Olympic Games and, for the most part, she has paid us back, but still we are not satisfied. I feel that I should declare an interest. Radcliffe is a modern-day heroine. I read her dry biography three years ago as if it were Anna Karenina, hanging on her every word. Mainly those words were about trainers, local cross-country races and running up hills. Radcliffe brought me to tears when she won her first significant gold medal at the Commonwealth Games in Manchester in 2002, so I wrote to her. I had not written to anyone famous since Jim’ll Fix It, but while Jimmy Savile did not write back, Radcliffe did.

Her London Marathon victories have been lessons in resilience and toughness; dogged and determined, she ploughs on. The day after those races you go to work and the challenges thrown at you do not seem so insurmountable, the office idiot who always gives you a tough time seems beatable.

Even Radcliffe’s marriage intrigues us — remember Gary Lough, her coach and husband, shouting at her at the finish line at the World Championships in Edmonton in 2001 because she had read the tactical race wrong. Every married person who witnessed that wondered how they would cope in that situation. Feminists wanted her to scream back at him, sportsmen understood why she did not. Somehow Radcliffe had managed to separate Gary the coach from Gary the husband.

Then Radcliffe had a daughter, Isla, last year and when she won the New York City Marathon less than a year after giving birth she told us that she got through the last two miles by repeating the mantra “I love you, Isla” because it fitted perfectly with her stride pattern. Need I explain our attachment to Radcliffe further?

With Beckham, even when two or three players were on better form when he was playing for England, we wanted his talismanic touch. When he was sent off in the 1998 World Cup against Argentina we blamed him for the defeat, but when he sent us to the 2002 World Cup finals with that equalising goal against Greece we forgave him. We were emotionally tied in.

Henman never arrived at Wimbledon as the top seed, but we always believed in his ability to defy the odds. Maybe it stemmed from 2001, when only rain and the brilliant fightback it provoked from Goran Ivanisevic stopped him from reaching the final. He exposed his desire to us and we were emotionally tied in.

Montgomerie is more human than the rest. He gets cross with us, puts on weight, gets divorced and every couple of years he helps to win the Ryder Cup for Europe. But has he got his hands on a major championship trophy? No, but we will not stop following his progress, we will still back him as an outside bet at the start of a tournament. We are infatuated with him because we see much of ourselves in his battles.

So back to the girl next door. Never has someone dropping out of an Olympic race sparked such debate as her exit in Athens in 2004 did. She cried on live television because she had let us down. Was she a quitter or a queen? A nation was divided, so should we risk embracing her again? Yes, because that is what people do. They let you down because they are imperfect and so we give second chances. And this is where we are, ignoring our genuine contender and investing again in Radcliffe. And all she has to do is finish. But wouldn’t it be magical if she did end up on the podium?