“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.