ScoobyNet.com - Subaru Enthusiast Forum - Paula Radcliffe- Overkill?

Taken from the Daily Telegraph a couple of days ago. Obviously it provoked a strong reaction in the letters page - although the majority appeared to support the journalist (Robert Philip) who wrote it. Philip is a very well known and respected sports journalist, so I don't think he was writing this just to get a few column inches.

"Radcliffe was a sore loser
By Robert Philip
(Filed: 25/08/2004)

The Tears of a Hero proclaimed one headline alongside a picture of Paula Radcliffe. Well, if it's heroes you want, then I'll give you heroes: Japan's Mizuki Noguchi, who won the Olympic marathon, was a hero. So, too, was Briton Liz Yelling, who produced a late sprint to overtake Maria Abel, of Spain, in a photo-finish for 25th place.

Nor should we forget her team-mate Tracey Morris, who ran in the same heat and up the same hills as Radcliffe to finish 29th only to be totally ignored by Fleet Street. And was there anyone more heroic than Mongolian Lursan Ikhundeg Otgonbayar, the 66th and last competitor across the line in the Panathanaiko Stadium, a full 30 minutes behind the woman in front and almost 1½ hours adrift of Noguchi?

But no, it is poor, distraught, anguished, heroic (I could go on but you get the drift) Radcliffe sitting in a gutter by the side of the road on whom we are expected to bestow the laurel leaf for Olympic gallantry.

Call me a cynic, but the way I see it is that unless the medics in Athens can come up with a physical reason why she quit just over three miles from the finish, Radcliffe stopped running and started bubbling for the simple reason that she had just seen gold, silver and bronze medals disappear into the distance.

A Sun editorial viewed things differently. "What an effort. What a heroine. Like all Britain's medal contenders she made us proud with her determination and spirit." As did the Daily Record. "Paula Radcliffe's Olympic dream died, the heat and energy-sapping hills around Athens proving just too much. But although she missed out on becoming the first Briton to win a Games marathon, she is still a great sporting hero."

And the Daily Mirror opined: "Was there ever a crueller end to an Olympic dream? It wasn't just that Paula Radcliffe failed to win the gold medal that seemed to have her name on it. It was the way she went out. In tears alone by the side of the road, shattered by the pain of the toughest marathon ever."

What most observers appear to have overlooked is that, yes, while there are only three medals on offer, every runner who completes any marathon course is a winner. Radcliffe - as brave, heroic, and dedicated as she might have proved herself to be in the past - was a loser on Sunday night and, judging by her reaction when she opted out of the race having conceded third place, a pretty sore loser at that.

But, hey, I am clearly in the minority. In these very pages former Olympic athlete David Bedford sought to explain the inexplicable (and even Radcliffe, herself, has failed to provide a reason why she sat on her stool like Sonny Liston conceding the world heavyweight title to Muhammad Ali) by saying: "She just couldn't go on and I imagine there was a whole raft of feelings in her head. Panic, shock and something close to bereavement." Bereavement? You clearly don't know the meaning of the word, David.

In Games' historian Bud Greenspan's epic tome 100 Greatest Moments In Olympic History, he relates the tale of Tanzanian John Stephen Akhwari, the last man home in the Mexico City marathon of 1968 - over an hour behind gold medallist Mamo Wolde, of Ethiopia - who entered the stadium with his left leg bloodied and bandaged, wincing with pain at every step. As one scribe put it: "Today we have seen a young African runner who symbolises the finest in human spirit . . . a performance that gives true meaning to sport . . . a performance that lifts sport out of the category of growing men playing at games."

When asked why he did not give up when he had no chance of winning, Akhwari replied: "I don't think you understand. My country did not send me to Mexico City to start the race. They sent me to finish the race."