It was a period of tiredness, restlessness and endless trips to the toilet which led to Radcliffe’s entire body “shaking violently” soon after entering her pre-race ice-bath. Those were the thoughts swirling around Radcliffe’s mind on the morning of what she describes in her book as the “biggest day of my running life”. Is it because of the heat and the amount I’m drinking? Is something not right with my tummy? Is it that I’m just awake anyway and so then need to go to the toilet?” Night after night I have been getting up to go to the bathroom much more than normal. “I try to relax but too often lose the battle. “Why is it that every morning I get out of bed and don’t feel properly rested?” Radcliffe wrote in her 2004 autobiography, Paula: My Story So Far. Yet in Athens it was a very different picture. In Clare he had spoken of her remaining remarkably calm in stressful circumstances – “sleeping like a baby”, even. I just felt totally empty out there, a feeling that I can hardly describe.”Īt this point it is worth revisiting Hartmann’s assessment of Radcliffe. What happened to me had nothing to do with dehydration or the heat. I had run more than 22 miles of a marathon and my urine was still clear. “The heat definitely hadn’t affected me,” she said. That Radcliffe felt utterly incapable of keeping going for another few miles is not in doubt but the runner herself has consistently dismissed the notion that it was heat and humidity that caused her to stop so close to the finishing line. It’s not that your legs hurt, you just feel horrible, you stop, there’s no question about it. “But that course, in that heat, was probably too much for her. “If it’d been a flatter course and a little cooler, she’d have been able to handle it,” Williams said. Speaking to the Guardian four days after the marathon, Clyde Williams, a sports physiologist at Loughborough University’s School of Sport and Exercise Sciences, was in little doubt the conditions had been the key contributing factor to Radcliffe’s downfall at the 22-mile mark. It had, after all, been the hottest day of the month in Athens, with temperatures topping 35C and humidity reaching an uncomfortable 31%, the highest in the Greek capital for six weeks. Some believe that Radcliffe’s will simply melted away in stifling conditions. To this day, there remains an air of mystery over the events of 22 August 2004. Tears, not cheers, and an image which has remained one of the most memorable from the 2004 Games and come to define the unfulfilled nature of Radcliffe’s career. Instead Radcliffe’s Olympic odyssey crashed to a halt by the side of a sweltering Greek street, with the protagonist sat on the curb, confounded by shock and devastation. There was, however, to be no crowning moment. Healthy in mind and seemingly unstoppable in body, Radcliffe had arrived in the west of Ireland as the marathon world-record holder having set a blistering time of 2hr 15min 25sec in London seven months previously – all seemed well for Athens and a first Olympic medal, most probably gold, for Britain’s finest competing long-distance runner. “I find that during times of huge stress Paula sleeps well – sometimes 14 hours straight. “In my dealings with some 43 Olympic medallists, I have never seen anyone who can handle stress better than Paula Radcliffe,” says the runner’s physical therapist, Gerard Hartmann, as he watches her charge up and down the rugged, hilly terrene.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |