Do you want to see Paula Radcliffe’s blood? If so, you’re not alone. Radcliffe, three-time winner of the London Marathon has been outed as a drugs cheat by the Tory MP Jesse Norman. No proof, but proof is for wimps. Radcliffe’s name will now always have a certain stink.
Norman used parliamentary privilege to talk about ‘the winners or medallists at the London Marathon, potentially British athletes… under suspicion for very high levels of blood doping.’ That was enough to tar Radcliffe as a possible druggie. It’s like accusing a public figure of paedophilia: the softest whisper will do for them.
Pressure has been brought on Radcliffe to go public with her ‘blood values’ — complex medical data — but she has refused, on the legitimate grounds that no one bar a few experts has the slightest idea what they mean.
Radcliffe is the second major British athletics love-object to get the treatment this year.
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