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Athletics: Perfect Paula odds on for acclaim after adding glory to guts

Mike Rowbottom
Saturday 07 December 2002 01:00 GMT
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Even If you hadn't other evidence, the man at the BBC would have given away the winner of tomorrow's Sports Personality of the Year contest merely by listing the likely runners and riders.

"Paula Radcliffe obviously,'' he said, "and there are others including the likes of...'' There followed a list that included three of Radcliffe Obviously's fellow athletes, two footballers, a boxer and a jump jockey. But after a year which began with her retaining her World Cross Country title and ended with her having won the London Marathon on her debut, the Chicago Marathon in a world-best time and her first major track golds at the Commonwealth Games and European Championships, the 28-year-old Bedford runner is now, according to William Hill's Graham Sharpe, the virtually unbackable favourite to step forward and receive the BBC's big silver camera in front of her obediently-seated peers.

"There's never been as hot a favourite,'' Sharpe said. "If she didn't win, there would be a huge stewards' enquiry.'' Radcliffe's odds as of Thursday were 33-1 on, but a swift bit of research by Sharpe indicated that the virtually unbackable runner was still picking up the odd bet. "We've just had two people put £330 on her,'' he said. "A couple of punters want to be given a tenner for Christmas. We call it 'buying money' and it works 149 times out of 150, but if you get it wrong, it's very painful. Last year we had someone put £90,000 on England to beat Italy in the rugby to win £600. Italy scored the first try, so I don't know how they felt at that moment...''

Most of those who fancied Radcliffe's chances, however, bet on her earlier in the year, when they were able to get fairly good odds. "You could still get her at 20-1 after the London Marathon,'' Sharpe said. "And even after the Commonwealth Games she was still odds against. There was still the feeling that somebody from one of the big boy sports, as it were, would come along with something to beat her. That didn't happen, though.

"Although Lennox Lewis beat Mike Tyson, it was slightly devalued by the fact that, after the fight, people could see Tyson was nowhere near the boxer he once was. England's World Cup team misfired. Tony McCoy broke the record for wins as a jump jockey, but the Sports Personality doesn't tend to go to riders. Even Frankie Dettori couldn't do it when he won his seven out of seven at Ascot.''

As an athlete, Radcliffe has a statistical advantage in this competition. Since the first award went to Chris Chataway in 1954, the year of his dramatic victory over the phenomenal Russian, Vladimir Kuts, athletes have won the award 15 times. Motor racing, with seven victories, including doubles for Nigel Mansell and Damon Hill, is the nearest challenger in the sport's rear-view mirror.

History, then, is on Perfect Paula's side. As is the British public, which has been keen and eager to acclaim this successful model of the middle classes at the very first opportunity.

Her annus mirabilis has come after years of conspicuous and ultimately unsuccessful effort. The quintessential image of Radcliffe has been that of an anguished figure seeing African runners float past her to earn the medals she cherished. Now, the image is of a broadly grinning blonde, draped in the Union Jack.

Radcliffe has reinvented herself in the dramatic manner of fellow athlete Jonathan Edwards, whose sudden emergence as the world's leading triple jumper in 1995 saw him become the last athlete to earn the Sports Personality award.

Yet even before her transformation, which has, in truth, been more of a culmination, Radcliffe accessed a wellspring of goodwill from athletics followers. After the 1999 World Championships, where she was beaten to the 10,000m title by Ethiopia's Gete Wami, and the 2000 Olympics, where she led before missing out on a medal, she received huge amounts of appreciative and sympathetic mail.

Having watched Radcliffe in action over the course of the last decade, the race I most clearly remember her running is the 1995 World Cross Country Championship in Durham.

She had missed the previous year's event with injury and was desperate to win on home soil – but far from fully fit after suffering with a viral infection. Despite losing touch with the leaders a lap before the end, she drove herself onwards through the slippery mud, head bobbing, legs churning, until she crossed the line at the point of collapse. Not sensible, to be sure, but as a statement of commitment it could not have been bettered.

The girl just doesn't how to slack, a characteristic which endears itself to Britain's sporting followers above all else. They like her victories; they love her attitude.

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