“The sooner we get rid of losing, the happier everyone will be” - Philip Roth, The Great American Novel

The indelible memory of this sporting year will be of Paula Radcliffe. She will either win gold in a cathartic, tear-inducing triumph or be damned as a choker, just another athlete who sacrificed her talent on the altar of heroic failure. This is the madness of the British jury.

“Yeah, they’ll think I’m a failure,” she says. “People associate me with stopping in Athens. It does annoy me, but that’s life. I wouldn’t say it festers away, but it motivates me. I’ve not performed disastrously in Olympics, but I haven’t achieved what I wanted. There’s plenty of burning desire to make up for Athens.”

Radcliffe is a living legend, the world record-holder in the marathon, a Commonwealth, European and world champion. Perhaps it is our obsession with defeat that means that her few setbacks are more ingrained in the layman’s consciousness, the image of her crying on the kerbside after pulling out of the 2004 Olympic marathon even making the back cover of her autobiography.

The postAthens message boards shocked her. “I was hurt by the injustice and often outright hatred of some of the posters,” she says. “Don’t they think that people have feelings? I’d say it didn’t hurt, but it did. I reached the point with journalists and Joe Public where I had to accept not everyone is going to like me.”

What’s not to like? Radcliffe is a rare mix of kryptonite and vulnerability. Athens was traumatic; injury and a reaction to antiinflammatory drugs ruining her victory hopes and condemning her to four years of revisiting the scene.

Much has happened since. She has had a daughter, Isla, now 15 months old and sitting on her knee as we speak in a marquee in Battersea Park, Central London, and has suffered foot and back injuries. She ended her 21-month sabbatical last September at the BUPA Great North Run and came second. Her foot locked up, so she had oil injected into the joint – and went and won the New York City Marathon in November.

A toe injury forced her out of last month’s Flora London Marathon and, when we meet, she has a hip problem. Does she get paranoid about these pains with the Beijing Olympics three months away? “I do, but I accept there will be bumps along the road,” Radcliffe says. “The toe was a nightmare because it went so long before being diagnosed. The joint actually blocked up running New York. I remember not feeling comfortable running down the hill. Gary said, ‘Why did you slow down so much?’ I didn’t know. The pain didn’t register. I thought it was my back, but watching the video I was actually running with a limp.”

Gary, of course, is Gary Lough, her husband, coach and mentor, once vilified for a public “domestic” after the 10,000 metres final at the 2001 World Championships in Edmonton, Canada. “Why the f*** did you do that?” Lough asked her in reference to her tactics. The scene was watched by millions on television. The next day Lough’s mother phoned him. “You are an a***hole,” she said. Utterly devoted and as obsessed as his wife, Lough is the model father and remains Radcliffe’s anchor.

Radcliffe does not mind being controversial, either, as the “EPO cheats out” banner she held during Olga Yegorova’s heat in Edmonton proved. Seven years on, the fight against drugs has moved to the courts and Marion Jones is serving a jail term. “It’s good that people are being caught, it’s good it’s come out, although it took the US Government and FBI to get involved, but that needs to happen,” Radcliffe says. “Carl Lewis said this week that doping should be a crime, but I would go further than that. I would make it criminal to supply drugs and to encourage young athletes to take them.”

Another solution, she believes, is blood profiling and she is urging the IAAF to take samples from athletes over the course of their careers and thereby identify changes. This, she feels, would help to combat issues such as blood transfusions and growth hormone. “We’ve got to go down the blood profiling route,” she says. “I started doing it with a guy from the IAAF last year. I handed in all my blood tests because I get them done regularly, so he could understand it more. Certainly, in endurance events, you can say, ‘That level is suspect, we can’t ban you but you’re not allowed to compete.’ ” Despite such passionate views, Radcliffe is irritated by the sport’s bad press. “It’s not a serious problem here at all,” she says. “The UK is one of the cleanest countries out there. I know that.” But globally, this is a pivotal time in the fight against drugs: the case against Trevor Graham, the United States sprint coach, is scheduled to begin this month; Justin Gatlin, the Olympic 100 metres champion, is awaiting an appeal verdict from the Court of Arbitration for Sport on his four-year ban; and Dwain Chambers, the Great Britain sprinter, is heading back towards athletics after an ill-fated sojourn in rugby league.

“We have to invest more in the testing because at the moment there’s probably more money going into cheating than there is being pumped into antidoping,” Radcliffe says. “It annoys me the profile Dwain is still getting. There are youngsters coming through, like Christine [Ohuruogu], Nicola Sanders, Phillips [Idowu], why aren’t they getting that? Don’t make him a hero.” How would she feel if Chambers were part of the Britain team in Beijing? “I don’t think that’s going to happen,” Radcliffe says. “He served his ban and should, by the rules, be allowed back, but I object to him cashing in on the media side [a book is being written]. I’m with Darren Campbell – I’d be annoyed if I was part of a relay team and he lost me my medal.”

Isla wants the tape recorder, but Radcliffe says something to her in French – they live in Monaco – and she wanders off. “She needs a lot of entertaining during the day, but she crashes at around 7.45pm and sleeps through until 8.30am. I give her breakfast, drop her at the crèche and then do the main session of the day. She naps while I nap in the afternoon. She makes my core exercises more difficult because she likes to push me over, but the only real change is Gary does fewer evening runs with me.”

Radcliffe, 34, wants to have another child after the Beijing Games – “definitely, although we’ve not planned when exactly, but probably only one more”. She looks a picture of contentment, but there is still that one piece of the jigsaw missing. She is a happily married mother and has run three of the four fastest marathons in history, but this will be her fourth Olympics and she is yet to stand on the podium.

Will Beijing’s well-documented pollution hinder her prospects? “It’s been overhyped by the media,” she says. “After Mara [Yamauchi, Radcliffe’s fellow British marathon runner] did the Olympic test run, she said we’re all going to have sore throats afterwards, runny eyes and runny noses. But I don’t think it’s going to affect you like the heat and humidity.”

She will not be wearing a mask, either. “The media got the wrong end of that because we were never meant to compete in them,” Radcliffe says. “If we get there, the air quality is bad and they say you’ll feel more comfortable if you wear a mask then I’ll wear one. I’m not bothered about looking stupid walking around the city. You could jog in them, but not run a marathon. They were never intended for that.”

After her trip to London, Radcliffe will return to her training base in Font Romeu, France. She will try to fit in another race before Beijing, “although it’s not paramount or necessary”. She will spend 12 days at the Britain training camp in Macau and fly to Beijing two days before the marathon on August 17. Given that she has made it to only two leading championships since 2002, she is trying to be fatalistic, but she is Paula Radcliffe, national icon, multitasking mother and the linchpin of Britain’s Olympic hopes.

“I’m not good at accepting down days,” she says. “I can say I’ll be philosophical if it goes wrong in Beijing, but I don’t believe it – if it happens again it will be a disaster.”

Paula Radcliffe joins Tesco in celebrating its seventh year of supporting Cancer Research UK’s Race for Life. Enter Race for Life 2008 by visiting www.raceforlife.orgor phone 0871 641 2282.

The life of a long-distance runner

Highs

London Marathon, 2003 Followed up her all-conquering 2002 season by running a staggering 2hr 15min 25sec, a world record that ranks with any.

New York City Marathon, 2004 It was barely two months since the nightmare of Athens, but she dug deep and held off Susan Chepkemei, of Kenya, to win.

World Championships, 2005 Six years after winning a silver in the 10,000 metres, finally won world gold in the marathon in Helsinki, a minute clear of the rest.

Lows

Olympic Games, 2004 A stomach problem follows a leg injury and she is forced to stop after 23 miles. “I couldn't put one foot in front of the other,” the hot favourite said.

World Championships, 2001 Finished 0.08sec off a medal in Edmonton, Canada, after changing tactics and had a public spat with her husband afterwards.

Albuquerque, 2003 Out for a training run, Radcliffe collided with a cyclist, hit the ground, disclocated her jaw and suffered multiple abrasions to her face.