Radcliffe, Paula

Paula Radcliffe, (born December 17, 1973, Northwich, Cheshire, England), British distance runner who set world records in the marathon.

Radcliffe was born into an athletic family. Her great-aunt Charlotte Radcliffe won an Olympic silver medal in the 4 × 100-metre freestyle swimming relay in 1920, and Paula cheered on her father, a recreational runner, when he ran in the 1985 London Marathon. By the time she was a teenager, Radcliffe had emerged as a running talent. She won the world junior cross-country title in 1992 and then entered a period of steady but sometimes frustrating progress in global track championships. She finished seventh in the world championship 3,000 metres in 1993 and fifth in the 5,000 metres in the 1995 world championships and the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta. In 1997 Radcliffe advanced to fourth in the 5,000 metres. Two years later, with her characteristic head-bobbing gait and eyes rolling back with the effort, she set the pace in the world championship 10,000 metres in Sevilla, Spain. However, she was passed on the last lap by Gete Wami of Ethiopia and finished second in 30 min 27.13 sec. At the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, she pushed the pace again in the 10,000 metres, setting up an Olympic record for winner Derartu Tulu of Ethiopia but finishing fourth herself. Later that year Radcliffe won the world half marathon title, which signaled that her future might lie in the longer distances.

Radcliffe won a world cross-country long course gold in March 2001, a title she successfully defended in early 2002. She again finished fourth in the 10,000 metres, in the 2001 track world championship; she then charted a course toward the marathon, training in the Pyrenees, where she logged up to 225 km (about 140 miles) per week in training. She won her first marathon, in London, in April 2002 with a time of 2 hr 18 min 56 sec. Later that year she competed in the Chicago Marathon. Her winning time of 2 hr 17 min 18 sec cut 89 seconds from the women’s world record for the marathon and represented the biggest improvement in the event in more than 17 years. Radcliffe then won two gold medals within 10 days at the 2002 Commonwealth Games (5,000 metres) and European championships (where she ran history’s second fastest women’s 10,000 metres in drenching rain).

In 2003 Radcliffe set a new world record in the London Marathon with a time of 2 hr 15 min 25 sec. In 2004 she again earned a spot at the Olympics but had to drop out because of an injury. Still, she managed to win the New York City Marathon later that year, and in 2005 she claimed her third London Marathon. She won the New York Marathon again in 2007, some nine months after giving birth to her first child. Radcliffe finished a disappointing 23rd in the marathon at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing because of insufficient training after a stress fracture. A few months later, however, she won her third New York City Marathon. Subsequent injuries and the birth of her second child in 2010 limited her race appearances. Because of a foot injury, she was unable to compete in the 2012 Olympics in London. In 2015 she announced that she would be retiring after that year’s London Marathon; she finished the race in 2 hr 36 min 55 sec. In recognition of her athletic achievements, Radcliffe was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in 2002. Two years later she published the memoir Paula: My Story So Far.