It's interesting to compare Paula's times over the various distances at which she has competed with the fastest times ever recorded.

Her fastest 5,000m time is slightly less than 8 sec slower than Tirunesh Dibaba's 5,000m world record, which incidentally I believe to be the ONLY current women's track world record set by a clean athlete.

Her fastest 10,000m time is 30 seconds behind the world record set by Wang Junxia, who was part of the 'turtle blood' crew of Chinese athletes around the early-mid 1990s who were clearly at it. The next fastest time apart from WJ is only eight seconds faster than Paula's best time.

While these times in themselves do not prove a great deal, they do demonstrate that Paula improved the further she ran in comparison to the world's best athletes. When one bears in mind that the marathon is run over 42195m her progression in comparison to other athletes is easily explained, and one should also consider that the Women's marathon is a relatively recent addition to the Athletics calendar, and thus the training methods and preparation are not as advanced as other events which have been on the calendar for far longer.

I have been meaning to write a book about the comparisons between Paula and Emil Zatopek in their improvement on existing training methods and thus their ability to set standards their peers and immediate successors could not nearly match, and their almost supernaturally similar running style and gait. Like most things I plan, I haven't quite got round to it

I remain convinced that Paula is a clean athlete - I believe that given the stink she kicked up about Yegerova and the other EPO cheats when that method of cheating was in its infancy, the IAAF would have done anything in their power to shut her up had there been even the slightest doubt about her.

@Zazu -- The height argument is a complete myth.
Most of the top men are circa 5ft

That is because, as already mentioned, being short is an advantage in hot and humid conditions.

Here is Epstein again:

One reason that marathon runners tend to be diminutive is because small humans have a larger skin surface area compared with the volume of their body. The greater one’s surface area compared with volume, the better the human radiator and the more quickly the body unloads heat. (Hence, short, skinny people get cold more easily than tall, hefty people.) Heat dissipation is critical for endurance performance, because the central nervous system forces a slowdown or complete stop of effort when the body’s core temperature passes about 104 degrees.
Epstein, David (2013-08-29). The Sports Gene: Talent, Practice and the Truth About Success (pp. 119-120). Random House. Kindle Edition.

This explains why Radcliffe was dominant in spring and autumn, in London and Chicago but melted in the heat of the Athens and Beijing Olympics.

In cool conditions, Radcliffe's long stride was an advantage. In the heat, her height ruined her chances.

@A_T -- how can Radcliffe deny she is on the list? If she is not on it, how would she know?

The one thing she lacked was basic speed. The one thing a marathon runner doesn't need is basic speed.

Again EO, all things are relative, her best time in the 3000m has only been bettered by about ten women in history, and is a much older discipline than the two longer track events.

like Lance Armstrong, you will get people who just dont want to believe she doped and instead want to think she is super human

Being better than someone at something, or being better than everyone at something, is not an indication of doping. That's just a cul-de-sac way of thinking, at the end of which you trust no result of any sporting event ever.

My background is in Biology, specialising in animal physiology. Yet without wading into text books again and reading more recent scientific papers I wouldn't trust myself to "read" an athlete's blood result. Radcliffe, WADA and UK anti-doping are correct in saying that athletes releasing their data is at best pointless and at worse damaging. Aside from everything else people don't understand what a blood passport is and the artificially built in permissible boundaries that are slewed to prevent false positives.

As someone who has said, (and been banned from forums for saying it), since I saw him and Pantani going up Ventoux in 2000 that Armstrong was doping, I feel I'm in the clear in saying there's no comparison between him and Radcliffe.

Radcliffe's marathon world record is just as much of an outlier than Pantini on Ventoux or alp d'heuz

.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpe_d%27Huez#Fastest_ascents

That list and its doping annotations are what athletics records would look like if IAAF ever took doping seriously. At least cycling is out in the open

This is the position into which the IAAF has contorted itself brendanuk. There have always been outliers in sport, Bradman springs to mind as the ultimate example, Bob Beamon, James Cleveland Owens, even our own sainted Sebastian Newbold Coe, who is now charged with cleaning out the Augean stable.

Such has been the IAAF's lack of will in exposing the cheats that all its best performers and performances are now tainted.

Paula Radcliffe was a clean athlete, I have absolutely no doubt in my mind about that. She spent her entire career campaigning for the cheats to be exposed, for the IAAF to get tough on them. To be honest it grieves me enormously to have people questioning her, but I can understand why some do.

I meant the last bit of the 9.12 post

Jed the marathon is ideally suited to woman athletes because it is about endurance not strength, females on average live longer than men and this physiology that in theory gives them an advantage in very long distance races....the trade-off between strength and endurance favors the female athlete.

I would have to ask Pandorica's views on that, but without empirical evidence, I would still doubt it. As I said, the evidence of the last fifteen years suggests that the trade-off you mention is insufficient to bridge the gap.

That said, I am open to persuasion by someone who knows more about such things.

Jed, I have thought for some time that if any forumite is doing drugs, it's lfc1971

jed

Of course things are relative but Radcliffe was consistently defeated at the highest level because she didn't possess basic speed at that level. She could run very fast for a long way but would get burned off in world championship events by the very best. Once she moved to the marathon she could go hard for longer and break the competition.

Regarding basic speed the only thing that Radcliffe lacked slightly at middle distance was a sprint finish....this was set Coe apart eg, he could run 1500 meters at almost full speed and then still find a sprint finish at the end....it is rare for someone with a sprint finish such as this...of course as you say this is not so important in a marathon.

Think lfc needs to go back to biology class


Regarding the comparison with cycling. It's true, such as the 8 or 9 of the top 10 times up alp dhuez were confirmed doers and armstrong was right at/near the too and claiming to be clean

In 2014 Nike had revenues of €27.8billion

Not just about governments

Paula Radcliffe was a clean athlete, I have absolutely no doubt in my mind about that. She spent her entire career campaigning for the cheats to be exposed, for the IAAF to get tough on them. To be honest it grieves me enormously to have people questioning her, but I can understand why some do.

yet she's not denied she's on the Sunday Times list - despite a media outing this week ahead of the WCs after a marked silence.

@A_T -- yet she's not denied she's on the Sunday Times list - despite a media outing this week ahead of the WCs after a marked silence.

The Sunday Times list of what? The ST has a list of all blood tests, which it then got someone to analyse and point to suspicious findings. So Radcliffe (and everyone else) would be on the first list. And unless the ST has told her, how would she know what the ST's analyst thinks?