FOUR years ago, Paula Radcliffe came to the Olympic Games and made herself the type specimen of the Plucky Brit. The word “losing” could be added here if you wish, but it would be a tautology. Yesterday, Radcliffe took part in the Olympic marathon and once again gave us a classic performance of the Plucky Brit.
Nothing remarkable about that, of course. It happens all the time. Once a Plucky Brit, always a Plucky Brit, that is the way these things go. The remarkable thing about the business is that in the four years between Radcliffe’s two great Plucky Brit shows, she had been a queen. She has been a Great British Champion. She has been invincible.
In the Olympic Games of 2000, she ran in the 10,000 metres and led all the way apart from at the end and was fourth. All guts, no finish. In Atlanta, four years earlier, she had run in the 5,000 metres and was fifth. Found wanting at the highest level, you may say. And you would have been right. In 2001, she had a last go at Plucky Brit-ness and at the World Championships in Edmonton she was fourth. Led all the way except the finish.
She was Britain’s beautiful loser.
But then she reinvented herself. Swapped doubt for certainty, swapped anxiety for confidence, swapped defeat for victory. She swapped track for road, became a marathon runner, ran three marathons and won the lot. She ran the fastest debut marathon in London in 2002 and set a world record in Chicago a few months later. Then, in London last year, she took on her own record and smashed it out of sight.
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In doing all of this, she changed from an angst-ridden personality, tormented by self-doubt, into a person of utter serenity. Of course she won. She was supposed to win. She had found her distance, she had found her time, she had found herself. She was glorious to behold, the nation loved her and made her BBC Sports Personality of the Year. She could do no wrong.
Where once we had a Plucky Brit, we now had an angel: lovely to look at when scrubbed up and, in race trim, full of loveable eccentricities, with the high, crooked-arm action and the idiosyncratic head-bobble. She was the latest golden girl: all she lacked was the gold.
But that was only a matter of time. This was Olympic year: all her preparation was geared to a peak on marathon day at the Games in Athens. The course was difficult, but she knew that — hell, it was difficult for Pheidippides, who ran the same route 2½ thousand years ago, and he made it.
It was hot, but that was not exactly a surprise. She had prepared by training specifically to run long distances in the heat, in Spain, and in the French Pyrenees. And it was jolly hot for Mizuki Noguchi yesterday as well, and she won the damn thing. To say that the problem was heat is excuse, not reason. Of course it was tough: it’s supposed to be tough.
Radcliffe has run tough races before and won them. But in the biggest one, the one she wanted most, she was found wanting. Perhaps the course, with its hills and its heat, was too tough for her. Perhaps the occasion was too great. Perhaps the problem lay in training. Who is to say? The cynical will always find an explanation for good form — and for any subsequent failure.
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But what is not in question is the way Radcliffe’s face radiated doubt and distress from very early in the race. She looked, from very early on, like the Radcliffe of old. She ran like a Plucky Brit almost from the moment she left Marathon. She never tried to destroy the field, never looked capable of doing so. Her tremendous sense of authority over the distance, over the opposition, had deserted her. She had got used to being a queen: perhaps that was part of the problem.
So had we: and that was certainly what made the whole thing increasingly horrific to watch. It was a kind of spiritual striptease, every kilometre removing another layer of self-confidence from her, to leave her in the end a poor bare forked creature weeping by the side of the road: nowhere to go and no way to get there.
She tried twice to start again, and it couldn’t be done: the body empty of resources and the spirit in tatters. Sixteen months ago she ran down the Mall in London as a queen should, and it seemed that she was the source of all visible light.
Yesterday, she was the star who became a black hole. She was a Plucky Brit again and it was more than she could bear.