PAULA RADCLIFFE
PAULA RADCLIFFE gives her first interview since she was accused of recording ‘abnormal’ blood values
Read the full, emotional interview
PAULA RADCLIFFE remembers exactly how she felt when a bomb was dropped on her life a year ago. First there was confusion, then anger. Real bodyshaking anger. ‘My name was being dragged through the mud. I was being told I was a drugs cheat. It was the worst thing.’ After that came sadness; deep soul-crushing sadness that has left her weepy even when she speaks about it now. She says she’ll do anything to clear her name. ‘I was in Paris when the attacks happened. What people went through was awful. It made me think: we could not be here tomorrow and I don’t want the last thing people remember about me to be drugs.’
She’s offered to pay £1million towards an MRI scan that will determine whether she is telling the truth. ‘I am innocent,’ she says. ‘I have never taken drugs.’
It is early afternoon on a sunny day in Monaco when we meet. This is her first newspaper interview since the drugs allegations began raining down on her. She doesn’t look unduly stressed or angry as she saunters into the Fairmont Hotel in Monte Carlo. In fact, she looks great — the same sunshine blonde we all remember from the athletics track but with the additional glamour and sparkle that living in Monaco will give to a woman. She is 41 now but does not seem to have aged at all.
She is accompanied by her husband, Gary Lough, the former 1500m runner who was her coach for many years. If Radcliffe does not look as if she is under pressure, her husband certainly does. He bristles with hostility. He has had a year of grief and he is not looking forward to seeing his wife go through this inquisition by the media one bit.
‘He finds this very hard,’ says Radcliffe. ‘He’s protective and he gets angry for me. This hasn’t been at all good for him. It hasn’t been good for any of us.’ Lough continues to stare. It is not hard to see why Radcliffe’s husband is angry but, equally, it is not hard to see why questions are being asked of his wife’s blood values. She had three scores listed in her blood passport information obtained by ARD, a German documentary company, which, taken at face value, appear to be much higher than one would expect and potentially the result of medical intervention.
‘But that’s the point,’ says Radcliffe. ‘ “Taken at face value” is not the way to look at the figures. You have to take the figures in context. You have to look at what was happening at the time. No one did that. They looked at the figures and came to all the wrong conclusions.
‘There are lots of reasons why a figure could be high. A sample collected at altitude will have different values to one collected at sea level. Or it could be because you’re ill, or on antibiotics. You could have been dehydrated when you took the test, or have drunk litres of water. These things will all affect your scores.
‘You have to fill in a form when you give a sample, and that form asks you lots of questions which provide context. You can’t analyse the blood values and come to conclusions about them without it.’
It may be wrong to take values in isolation and pronounce on the implications of them, but — equally — why didn’t Radcliffe immediately offer the relevant context, as soon as rumours started circulating? ‘She wanted to shout her innocence from the rooftops,’ says Lough. ‘We tried to get them analysed. We were contacting WADA [the World Anti-Doping Agency] and the IAAF. We had nothing to hide, but it was very hard to get anything done, to get scores looked at by experts. We were told to get our heads down and to employ a lawyer. It seemed odd to have a lawyer when you’d done nothing wrong, but I soon learned that you need a lawyer when you’re being attacked.’
Radcliffe was not named in the original television programme a year ago. But it was soon circulating in the media that her name was on a list, supposedly from inside the IAAF, that contained names of athletes who had allegedly given ‘suspicious’ samples. Then in August, it was alleged that ‘a top British athlete’ had given three blood tests whose ‘scores’ were so ‘abnormal’ that there was only a one-in-a-1,000 chance that they were natural.
Radcliffe was not named, but the internet was awash with speculation that Britain’s most successful longdistance athlete was the unnamed individual.
‘It was getting worse and worse,’ she says. ‘And I knew that all the scores could be accounted for, but no one wanted to talk about that — they just wanted to jump to conclusions.’
There are tears in her eyes as she speaks. She gives a half-smile and holds them back, retaining her composure but clearly very upset. Lough leans forward and asks the photographer not to take pictures of her looking distressed. His behaviour feels controlling, but Radcliffe clearly views his intervention as a protective arm around her shoulder. She tells her husband not to worry, she wants to talk, and to get the issues straight in people’s minds.
Radcliffe explains to my colleague Nick Harris why the results do not prove that she took drugs. She produces documentation as she talks, flicking through a pile of papers and scrolling through her iPad, showing the hospital documents and the blood data figures that have caused her such consternation.
‘I have had to endure 12 months hs of hell,’ she says, teary once again. ‘The children have been affected by it . . . all the phone calls and the worry, all the ruined holidays because mum and dad are busy talking to lawyers.
‘I’ve never been in that position before where you haven’t done anything wrong but people think you’re guilty. You hear of people who have been wrongly accused and have had to fight cases for, like, five years. I had letters from 10 separate people who had almost considered suicide because they were accused of something they didn’t do, it’s horrible, horrible.
‘I kept thinking, “At the end of the day the truth has to come out”, then Gary turned round to me one day and said, “Yes, but people go to prison for things that they didn’t do”. That was a pretty low point. I’m quite a positive, upbeat sort of person, but it’s been hard.’
All this time, Radcliffe was still unnamed as the owner of the blood sam-
We were told to just get our heads down and to employ a lawyer
ples being discussed, then, during a select committee meeting, speaking under the protection of Parliamentary privilege, committee chairman Jesse Norman asked David Kenworthy, the chairman of UKAD, the UK’s national anti-doping agency: ‘When you hear that the London Marathon, potentially the winners or medallists at the London Marathon, potentially British athletes, are under suspicion for very high levels of blood doping . . . when you think of the effect that has on young people and the community nature of that event, what are your emotions about that how do you feel about that?’ Radcliffe believed the wording of Norman’s question made it clear he was talking about her (apart from the wheelchair race Radcliffe is the only British winner of the London Marathon since 1996). She responded by ‘outing’ herself. In a statement she ‘categorically denied’ cheating, saying she was disappointed her ‘identity was effectively leaked’.
‘As a result of today’s parliamentary hearing, I can no longer maintain my silence,’ it read. ‘Many innocent athletes are being implicated and tainted due to the distorted interpretation of a lim
ited historic dataset. I categorically
All athletes get odd scores... I’m disappointed nobody stood up and said so
deny that I have resorted to cheating in any form whatsoever at any time in my career, and am devastated that my name has even been linked to these wide-ranging accusations.’
Why did she feel the need to let people know it was her?
‘I was so upset, I had to comment. I had to get involved. We’d got to the stage where it was so obvious that it was me they were talking about, even though they hadn’t said my name. I couldn’t sit back any more. By confirming that it was me, I was at least able to defend myself.
‘I was very angry with WADA and UK Anti-Doping about the way it was handled. When the issue was brought up in the select committee they had the perfect opportunity to say there had never been any question about any samples of British athletes.
‘Or, if they weren’t going to defend me, they should have invited me so I could defend myself. I would have liked the chance to have sat there and asked: “Will you tell me exactly what you think is so suspicious?” I can explain those readings but no one invites me to these things.’
She describes the ‘outing’ as a ‘particular low’ and says she is very eager to go to a select committee meeting to talk to them about her experiences.
Another low point was the response of other athletes. She received a lot of support privately from athletes but feels no one backed her publicly. ‘If I’m honest I’m disappointed that nobody actually stood up because I would have done, if it had been the other way round and it had been someone else. I would have said publicly, “Hang on a minute, this isn’t fair because I got off-scores like that”. All athletes get odd scores. It’s not straightforward. It would have been good if someone had said that.’
One person who did stand up for her was Lord Coe, who was unequivocal in his support of her: ‘I absolutely believe Paula Radcliffe is clean,’ he said.
‘Seb’s been great,’ she says. ‘Very supportive. I’m also really grateful to Steve Cram and to close family and friends for their support. And the general public have been amazing; their support has been invaluable. I’m really grateful.’
Having endured her annus horribilis, Radcliffe found herself in Paris two weeks ago, taking her children to Disneyland, when the attacks happened in the centre of the city.
‘How can you find the words to explain that kind of evil to your children? It was so horrific that it made me reassess everything. How can we live better, and do more for our children to counteract this? Explaining it all to the children was tough, the little one [Raphael] is only five so he didn’t really understand but with Isla, who is eight, we had to explain what had happened.
‘This is after we’d already had to explain in the summer why we were so upset because there were bad people trying to write things that were not true about mummy. Now there were bad people attacking the city.
‘It’s a difficult thing to tell a child, and it made me think, we could not be here tomorrow and I don’t want the last thing people remember about me to be that I was linked to drugs. You teach your kids to defend themselves and then you’re not able to stand up for yourself, that’s really hard. I want to be given the chance to sit down and say to everyone who has doubted me, “Do you really believe there is enough evidence here to say that I’m on drugs? Do you?”
‘Because there isn’t. There isn’t enough evidence because I didn’t take drugs.’