An emotional Paula Radcliffe broke down in tears yesterday as she struggled to describe how she had failed to even finish the Olympic marathon which she had been hotly tipped to win.
Radcliffe had crashed out of Sunday’s race at the 36-kilometer mark, staggering to a halt before trying to start running again. Eventually the 30-year-old Briton had sat on the side of a road, holding her head in her hands, choking back tears.
“I am struggling to find out what happened and find a reason for it. The conditions were tough for everyone. I did not feel the heat was a factor.
“It just got to a stage in the middle of the race when I just had nothing in my legs,” Radcliffe told a packed press conference. “I am totally devastated because this is what my life has been all about.”
She said that although her husband and her parents had tried to comfort her after the race, she was inconsolable.
“There was nothing anyone could say to me in that situation. No one was hurting inside as much as I was,” she said before breaking down in tears.
Although the race began in the evening, the heat of the Athens day lingered on and many runners were in a distressed state, but Radcliffe denied the heat had been a factor in her flop.
“I was still going downhill and I felt if I was going uphill. There was not anything hurting.
“I did not finish dehydrated or in distress from the heat,” she said.
Radcliffe said she still had not decided whether to run the 10,000 meters, which takes place on Friday, in a bid to finally win an Olympic medal. She finished fifth in the 5,000m at the 1996 Atlanta Games and was fourth in the 10,000m four years ago in Sydney.
“I came here to run the marathon and win the marathon,” she said.
“I deeply want to go out there and redeem something for everything I have done, but I am not going to put myself in the arena if I am not right.”
Radcliffe shrugged off suggestions that the expectations of the British people had been a burden. “Probably the biggest pressure was from myself,” she said.
And Radcliffe said that although she had been having treatment in the weeks before the race for a “niggle” in her calf, it had not been a factor in her dropping out of the marathon.
