Few members of the athletics fraternity will either know or care where to find Jeina Mitchell these days. Twelve years ago, though, they charted her every move as she spreadeagled the best distance fields of teenaged girls in Britain. In March 1990 she won the English schools’ cross-country title by 11 seconds and four months later confirmed her superiority in the division by winning the 1 500m on the track by almost 10 seconds. On each occasion, one of those left breathless in her wake was Paula Radcliffe.
For the record, Mitchell hasn’t entirely disappeared off the scene. As Radcliffe prepared for last month’s tilt at the world marathon best at a variety of training camps from St Moritz to the Pyrenees, Mitchell was puffing and panting her way to the South of England 800m title in the less than salubrious surroundings of Watford, just outside London. Her winning time was a shade outside two minutes and seven seconds, a performance Radcliffe can probably reproduce half-a-dozen times in the same training session.
The sporting record books are littered with forgotten names like Mitchell who, as the years have passed, have watched on with envy as their cannon fodder has matured into big box-office material.
Radcliffe has been told by the organisers of next year’s London Marathon that she can write her own cheque for the appearance fee. But the 28-year-old has already hinted she will decline the offer. Money is not such a problem these days for Radcliffe. She’s the sport’s latest millionaire and signing the sort of deals that make a Springbok contract look like grocery money.
Radcliffe’s elevation to the premier league comes on the strength of her remarkable run on a windy day in the Windy City last month. Against the elements she took almost one-and-a-half minutes off the world marathon best to set the new mark of two hours, 17 minutes and 18 seconds. To put that into some sort of perspective, it was the most significant improvement on a world marathon record for 19 years.
Among Radcliffe’s predecessors is Grete Waitz, a great distance runner. But it is a staggering fact that Radcliffe’s run in Chicago was more than 15 minutes quicker than Waitz’s first record run in New York 24 years ago.
But things haven’t always come easy for Radcliffe. Until the Commonwealth Games, where she won the 5 000m in a time close to the world record, she was seen as a member of the Tim Henman School of British Sporting Losers.
The sight of Radcliffe’s nodding head at the front of a championship 10 000m field had become a familiar one. So too, however, had been Radcliffe’s last-lap demise as, firstly, at the Olympics in Sydney and then a year later in the world champion-ships in Edmonton she was relegated from first place at the bell to fourth at the line. Such had become her frustration that in Edmonton she became embroiled in an all-too public row with her husband, the former middle-distance international Gary Lough, shortly after crossing the line.
A couple of days later Radcliffe was making headlines again: this time when she held up a sign saying ”EPO Cheats Out”. It was directed at the Russian athlete Olga Yegorova who was competing in a heat of the 5 000m and who a few weeks earlier had failed a test for the wonder drug only to be reinstated on a technicality.
Radcliffe’s stance was a noble one — typical of a woman whose career has been carefully guided and ethics inculcated by her headmistress mother — but, according to one former world record holder, may leave her looking over her shoulder for the rest of her career. David Moorcroft, now the head of UK Athletics, even said he feared for her life.
”I think that was a bit of an over- reaction,” Radcliffe says. ”I don’t think he meant that. I think he feared that there might be some sort of retaliation, some sort of stitch-up.”
That may be so. But they’ll have to catch her first.