Paula Radcliffe: Regime change

Bob Chaundy
BBC News Profiles Unit

Once noted only for her courage and dignity in defeat, the British runner Paula Radcliffe is now enjoying huge success on the athletics track.

The word "honest" in sport is often ascribed to those whose achievements owe more to sheer grit than natural flair. But ultimately, at the very top, they're destined to be also-rans.

A year ago, Paula Radcliffe would have fitted this description as tightly as a pair of her running gloves.

Here was the pretty, plucky Brit, who would set the pace, head rolling as if in agony. But as the bell sounded, she seemed destined - by her lack of a natural kick finish - to see two or three Africans pass her at the death.

When she changed her tactics and stayed with the pack at the World Championships in Edmonton, Canada, she came fourth. This prompted the domestic with her husband and coach, Gary Lough, who, in full public view, screamed at her as she finished for not sticking to the game plan. He later apologised.

Follow the race with BBC Sport's London Marathon site

But last year's London Marathon - her debut at the event - changed everything. As she broke away from the lead pack before the 10-mile mark, BBC commentator Brendan Foster implored her to slow down.

She went on to win by a huge margin, a victory even more stunning given that she ran the second half four minutes quicker than the first.

The world record she missed by seconds that day, she captured later that year in the Chicago marathon, in a time faster than the legendary Czech Emil Zatopek could ever manage.

"She is my hero," says the great Ethiopian, Haile Gebrselassie. Only the top 20 men in the world can beat her.

The BBC's athletics correspondent, John Rawling, told News Online: "By a combination of strength, achieved through a punishing endurance regime, and the confidence of winning the London marathon, Paula found her metier."

Marathon effort

That regime involves running hard for 140 miles a week, an unimaginable feat for us plodders attempting to follow in the mass ranks behind her this weekend.

Years of hard slog pay off

After each long session, she climbs into a bath containing three carrier bags full of ice cubes to help her muscles recover quickly.

A lot of the running is done in the hills of her home in the Pyrenees. She was recently training at altitude in New Mexico when she collided with a girl on a bike - an accident that nearly cost her the chance to defend her London marathon title.

"In terms of training environment and rest and nutrition, she is two steps ahead of any other athlete I know," says her physical therapist, Gerard Hartmann.

Also included in the Radcliffe support team are a coach, a nutritionist, a weight trainer and an exercise physiologist.

Radcliffe's sense of dedication goes way back. When her father, Peter, began training for a marathon when she was just six, she would meet him and run the last half-mile at his pace.

Flair for languages

Every Sunday, her whole family would jog through the Delamere Forest near their home in Runcorn, Cheshire.

When they moved to Bedford when she was 12, she joined the local athletics club. Her extraordinary self-discipline was already evident. Her mother has spoken of how she would visit a sweet shop, buy a fudge bar, and make it last all week.

A road of her own in Bedford

That discipline was applied to more cerebral pursuits at Loughborough University. When a professor told her she could achieve good results by putting in 40 hours a week, she did just that and earned herself a First in modern languages and history.

At international meetings, she gives fluent interviews in French and German.

But there's another part of Radcliffe's character which makes the adjective "honest" even more applicable.

She has taken a high-profile stand against the use of illegal performance-enhancing drugs and fought to achieve more consistency in testing athletes.

After Russia's Olga Yegerova won the 5,000 metres in Edmonton, despite having tested positive for the banned drug EPO, Radcliffe scrawled a sign saying "EPO cheats out" and held it up in the front row of the stadium.

Inevitably, this caused a backlash.

Fight back

An article in the French magazine L'Equipe implied that Radcliffe's own change in fortunes might not have been achieved without chemical assistance.

Radcliffe is the current BBC Sports Personality of the Year

A stung Radcliffe responded by asking the British track federation to release the results of her last 10 drug tests, and then authorising the release of her blood tests taken before last autumn's world half-marathon championship and the London Marathon.

She then went further by offering her own current blood and urine samples to be frozen for analysis for when more sophisticated technology becomes available. There has been not a squeak against her since.

As for the future, Paula Radcliffe's one outstanding goal is to win an Olympic gold medal. She has talked of doubling up in Athens by doing either the 5,000m and the 10,000 metres, or even the 10,000m and the marathon.

But the fact that the organisers have, for commercial reasons, re-scheduled the marathon from its normal early morning start to 6pm when the weather's still hot may not do her any favours.

If she can win any of these Olympic events - and few would bet against her - Radcliffe will cement her position as the "golden girl of British athletics".