You have to be in it to win it and so Paula Radcliffe will arrive in Tiananmen Square tomorrow morning with a dodgy leg and a bag of bad memories. She admits that she is ill-prepared and that, if this was any other race, she would be at home, but this is the Olympics. “When you take any gamble, you have to weigh up the worst that can happen and decide whether you can live with that,” she said.

The worst that can happen is that, for the second Olympics running, Radcliffe pulls out of the marathon. It is a very real prospect, because nobody knows whether this high-grade athlete will cope with the low-grade stress fracture of her left femur that she suffered in May.

Her preparation has been curtailed, she wishes she had done “a lot more running” and, with Japan-based Mara Yamauchi in the field, she faces the strong possibility of not even being the first Briton home. Yet it is a gamble that will captivate and, if she pulls it off, she can add purveyor of minor miracles to her CV.

It is the thought of Athens, when a leg injury and a stomach problem caused by anti-inflammatory drugs caused her to drop out in tearful disbelief four miles from the finish, that is driving her. “The worst that could happen is thatthe leg would have broken down and I'd not have been able to make it, but I knew after what happened in Athens that I could deal with that if it happened,” she said.

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She insists that she put Athens “in a box” soon afterwards, but you sense that is what she would like to believe. Similarly, she bristled at the idea that this race would define her career. “No, no, no, no,” she railed. “It is just something that is very important to me. I have fought harder than I ever have to get to this point so I just want to go out and do everything justice.”

Athens was traumatic, albeit her tears and fragile interview on the BBC afterwards did not endear her to all. She went away, stewed and promptly won the New York City Marathon. Then she “threw up because I had a spag bol and they found I was wheat intolerant.” This is the Radcliffe way, always having to prove she has the stomach for the drama. “I've always been able to fall apart and come back,” she said.

Now 34, Radcliffe says she will be around for 2012, but this is surely her last, great Olympic chance. On the eve of the race, she knows her fate will be played out in front of an audience of millions, just as Mary Decker's ill-starred clash with Zola Budd was in 1984. “That is probably my first Olympic memory, sitting in my mum and dad's bed to watch it.”

The rivals are many, although Mizuki Noguchi, the defending champion, and Irina Mikitenko, the winner of the London Marathon, are not here. Catherine Ndereba, of Kenya, and Deena Kastor, of the United States, two thirds of the Athens podium, are in the field, though, along with Zhou Chunxiu, the Chinese woman most likely to win gold. The real battle is with herself, however, a heavyweight bout that is more Slog in the Smog than Rumble in the Jungle.

“I could have done with more time,” Radcliffe, who has not raced since last November, admitted. “But the Olympic marathon is not a race that I ever want to watch on television and wonder what I could have done. I knew I was taking a gamble by coming back, but they were calculated risks because I was never running through pain.”

Radcliffe is justifiably proud even to make the start line, but there is a veiled sense of doubt about her. “I have put myself in as good a position as I could have done,” she said. “Having got this far gives me a mental lift going into the race.” She maintains that she is in better shape than four years ago. “If I had run a perfect race in Athens, it would not have been any different,” she said. “Two weeks before I was in outstanding shape, but things fell apart. My body was just not healthy enough to start. This year I am healthy.”

The implications of the misdiagnosis of her fracture, which meant that she went without crutches for two weeks longer than necessary, will become clear tomorrow. Since then, the problems have mounted, a poisoned spider bite last month and a typhoon leaving her in her hotel in Macau last week. With Radcliffe, it never rains but it pours. Expect anything.