LONDON, May 10: Paula Radcliffe is Britain’s main hope of an athletics gold at the Beijing Olympics but the 34-year-old accepts that for all her medals and titles she still has to prove herself on the ultimate stage.

Radcliffe has world, European and Commonwealth titles on the road, track and in cross country and has developed into a supreme marathon runner.

She has a host of big-city titles and owns the three fastest times ever run, including her world record of two hours, 15 minutes and 25 seconds, which is more than three minutes faster than any other woman has managed.

Yet her return from three visits to the Olympics has been disappointing.

A fifth place in the 1996 5,000 metres in Atlanta, fourth in the 10,000 four years later at Sydney and her painful failure to finish the marathon she was favourite to win in Athens in 2004 and the subsequent early end to her 10,000 metres attempt.

“I’ve still got unfinished business with the Olympics,” she said.

“I haven’t been a failure in all the Olympics I’ve been to, but I just don’t think I’ve quite achieved what I’m capable of yet and I just hope that I can achieve that this time.”

Radcliffe’s withdrawal in the Athens marathon when, overwhelmed by heat exhaustion and the effect of anti-inflammatory drugs for an injury, she sat on the kerb and wept, created a strange backlash against an athlete who two years earlier had been voted Britain’s sports personality of the year.

Despite her progress from the nearly-woman of the track into the best marathon runner the sport has known, some observers doubted her courage and dared to label her a “quitter”.

Even a cathartic victory on the streets of New York three months later did not silence the doubters and when she triumphed in London in 2005 more attention was given to a roadside toilet break than to her fantastic performance.—Reuters