She described it as “a little setback”, but Paula Radcliffe can sometimes resemble Monty Python's Black Knight, who famously reacted to a severed limb with the deadpan line: “Just a flesh wound.” Having suffered toe and hip injuries since her return from almost two years out through problems and childbirth, the alarm bells are now ringing loudly as the hip injury has returned.

The Olympics are less than three months away but Radcliffe is on crutches and Gary Lough, her husband, said last night that the situation had been mishandled. “Considering what she has to face, she is not too bad,” Lough said. “This is something we did not need at this time.”

Radcliffe first revealed that she had a problem with her hip in an exclusive interview in The Times a fortnight ago. At the time she felt it was not a big deal, but an MRI scan failed to pick up the extent of the injury. A second test showed that the muscle had pulled away and was putting pressure on the bone. She is using crutches to ease the pressure and is due to have another scan on Wednesday.

Lough is clearly unhappy that the original scan meant they lost time. “There's no treatment that she can have and she just has to keep checking,” he said. “She can't do anything until we get the results of the scan. She would not be fighting as hard as she is if the Olympics were not that important.”

Radcliffe's path to Beijing has already been a potted one. Last year was bittersweet as she gave birth to a daughter, Isla, but suffered a stress fracture to the base of her spine. That meant that she was not ready to run in last year's World Championships, but she ended a 21-month exile when she was second in the Great North Run last September. A superb triumph in the New York City Marathon followed, but she then suffered a toe injury that went weeks before being picked up.

Liz McColgan, a former world champion at 10,000 metres, said that it was inevitable that Radcliffe, 34, would now be suffering a string of injuries. “You cannot train 120 miles a week and, later on in your career, not have the problems which that causes,” she said. “This is the stage she is at now, all the hard work and all the miles are now coming back and she is getting all the little niggles. It will be something else this week and something else the next week.

“It is how she manages that and she is going to have an awful lot more therapy and time spent on keeping her together. I think they can do it for one more run.”