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Marathon (wo)man Paula Radcliffe is running into a potential firestormPosted: Friday October 11, 2002 5:17 PM
If conditions are right (the wind dies down, the temperature stays out of the 60s), I expect something remarkable to happen in Sunday's Chicago Marathon. I believe Paula Radcliffe of Great Britain will destroy the women's world record for the distance. She will profit by achieving this, but she will also suffer greatly, because in the world of track and field and distance running, nothing is quite so dangerous as running -- or throwing or jumping -- better than anyone has previously. First, some background. I met Radcliffe last month at her high-altitude training base in southern France and interviewed her for a feature story in the current Sports Illustrated. She is a smart, delightful woman and probably one of the toughest athletes on the planet, a distance runner without natural speed who runs red-line mile after red-line mile. She is the 2002 version of 1980s U.S. marathoning great Alberto Salazar, who also was tough as nails and slow afoot. Radcliffe has been one of the best in the world on the track for nearly a decade. At the Sydney Olympics, she hammered on the lead in the 10,000 meters for 21 laps before getting outkicked for the medals. But since she was a child, she has been told that someday she would be a great marathoner. Another aside: The running community had been waiting impatiently for some woman to lower the marathon record. It was in 1985 that Ingrid Kristiansen took Joan Benoit's mark from 2:22:43 down to 2:21:06 (Benoit herself would later run 2:21:21), and then we itched for the inevitable sub-2:20. Thirteen years passed before Tegla Loroupe broke Kristiansen's record, twice finishing in less than 2:21, but still not under 2:20. Finally, last fall Naoko Takahaski of Japan (2:19:46) and Catherine Ndereba of Kenya (2:18:47) crossed the barrier. Radcliffe followed in the spring, running 2:18:56 and just missing Ndereba's record. Remarkably, Radcliffe did it with a sore knee and hugely negative splits. She can do much, much better, surely under 2:18, maybe under 2:17. Then there will be a problem, because if she runs too fast, people will assume that she must be using performance-enhancing drugs. It happens to every athlete in speed and endurance sports. When Tim Montgomery suddenly started running close to world-record time in the 100 meters -- he ultimately broke Maurice Greene's mark last month -- there were whispers. With four-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong, the French don't whisper, they jeer. No one knows this better than Radcliffe. Hers is one of the most strident anti-doping voices in all of sports. She demands to be tested frequently. She holds up signs admonishing those who have tested positive. Yet this summer, when she ran the second-fastest 10,000 meters in history, she was brought under suspicion by European media. As I sat one afternoon and ate lunch with her in Font-Romeu, her frustration was clear. I asked if she was certain dirty athletes had beaten her. "Not, I'm not certain," she said. "And that's the problem, isn't it? None of us is certain of anything." This much I can say: I love watching sports like marathoning. I have boundless admiration for the preparation and courage required to run 26 miles, 385 yards at a pace that most people would consider to be sprinting. I want no doubt. I want the scientists to become more thorough. I want the bad guys caught. All of them. Yet the doping police tell me that dozens of new drugs are being developed that will be used by some athletes long before they are available for mass consumption. They tell me that they still can't test for human growth hormone, synthetic forms of which are now available over the counter. I don't see a light at the end of the tunnel. I see only darkness and suspicion. Sports Illustrated senior writer Tim Layden is a regular contributor to CNNSI.com. Click here to send him a question or comment.
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