Paula Radcliffe's 2007: 'After the first mile or so, things started to go well...'

In the first of our annual series of interviews with major figures who have shaped the sporting year, Mike Rowbottom talks to the athlete who began 2007 by embracing motherhood but ended it by winning the New York Marathon so convincingly that she has realistic ambitions for Olympic gold next year – and even in 2012

Published: 19 December 2007

Paula Radcliffe was 10 when she first became aware of her Olympic connection. Until then, the woman she vaguely remembered meeting as a young child had simply been her great aunt Charlotte. But as the Los Angeles Games got under way in 1984 she learned the details about Charlotte Radcliffe's sporting achievement – winning a silver medal at the 1920 Antwerp Olympics in the 4x100 metres freestyle swimming event.

"I was told about what she had done when I first started watching the LA Olympics on television," Radcliffe recalls. "We had pictures of her in our album. They were mostly family shots, although there were some taken of her at the time of the Games, diving into the water with her team-mates."

As you might expect, Radcliffe was a competent swimmer. But her areas of endeavour, even then, were the track and the road rather than the pool.

"I can swim – I'm not bad, but not great," she says. "I got my bronze, silver and gold badges. But there was no contest in terms of what sport I wanted to do."

At the age of 34 – it was her birthday on Monday – Radcliffe has a wealth of titles and records. She has, indeed, a wealth of wealth. She has homes in Monaco, the French Pyrenees and Albuquerque. She has a supportive family, a loving husband, Gary Lough, who is also her manager, an adored daughter, Isla, who is coming up to a year old. She has a coach in Alex Stanton with whom she has kept faith since her childhood. She has almost everything, it seems, except an Olympic medal.

That ambition still flares in her like the Olympic flame itself. And given her nature, she is unlikely to be satisfied even with a medal of the same hue as her great aunt's.

Radcliffe has been close to...