January 14, 2008

Paula Radcliffe will have to fight her way through streets swathed in smog that is 15 times denser than in London, ignore the nagging memory of her kerbside implosion in Athens and then shrug off the best that Japan and China can throw at her if she is to win gold in Beijing. The one thing you can be sure of is she will try her hardest. “It was like part of us had died,” her husband, Gary Lough, said after the Athens Olympics. Nobody cares quite like the Radcliffes.

Although Radcliffe has stated that she plans to be around in 2012 to compete at the London Olympics, the reality is Beijing provides the last great opportunity for her to rectify the one glaring omission on her CV.

For all her achievements, the Olympics have been a hapless hunting ground for the 34-year-old. Fifth in 1996 and fourth in 2000, by the time she was established as a marathon runner in 2004 she was suffering from a stomach complaint brought on by taking homeopathic treatment for a leg injury suffered two weeks before the Games began.

That shows the perils of pinning all your hopes on one person when injury lurks around every corner. However, Radcliffe has come back from giving birth to Isla a year ago in a fashion that lends credence to those who believe pregnancy is a bonus for marathon runners. “I do think it gives you an extra inner strength as well as extra balance as a person,” Radcliffe said. “I definitely feel stronger.”

But will it be enough to combat the smog, heat and humidity of Beijing? Radcliffe insists that the Athens failure was unrelated to the conditions and, after winning in New York, said the worst asthma attack she has ever had was in a cinema in Loughborough.