When Paula Radcliffe approached Tower Bridge at halfway in the London Marathon and began to stride effortlessly away from the greatest women's field ever assembled for the race, few could have believed she was not only running towards victory but also beginning her sprint towards athletics immortality.

At the start of 2002, to the amusement of some who had her pigeonholed as the latest in a long line of gallant British losers, Radcliffe had set herself five tasks. They were to retain her world cross-country title; to win the London Marathon; collect her first gold medal on the track in the Commonwealth Games 5,000 metres; break the European 10,000m record in the European Championships in Munich; and set a world record in the Chicago Marathon. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.

No one is laughing now, especially with Radcliffe having the BBC sports personality of the year award on her mantelpiece and a clutch of signed five-figure contracts stashed away in her desk.

"I never doubted that she would do it," says Ingrid Kristiansen, the former multi world record-holder who remains Radcliffe's heroine but whose achievements she has now surpassed, including breaking her 10,000m record in Munich. "Everyone used to say about Paula's lack of kick finish but ignore that she was getting stronger each year and that one day everything would come together in the marathon."

Age and distance seemed to have converged into success for Radcliffe, after the disappointment of fourth in the 2000 Olympic 10,000m in Sydney and the 2001 world championships in Edmonton. Two world cross-country golds after eight unsuccessful attempts and two world half-marathon titles announced that we were unmistakably entering the prime of Paula Radcliffe, and that a corner had been turned.

The announcement of her marathon debut in London was exciting, but smacked of looking for trouble. Trouble in the shape of Derartu Tulu. The Ethiopian was the reigning champion in London and looked set to continue her ascent to greatness on yet another surface. But Radcliffe was on a roll.

She was simply superb in the destruction of a field that should have commanded respect but which she hardly seemed to notice. She has only ever used one tactic successfully; the application of simple pace at the front has brought glory, but almost equal measures of frustration over the years as time and time again she failed to burn off the very best in the world.

But in London the strongest field, and a distance of legendary unpredictability, were so thoroughly and comfortably dispatched as to make them little more than the sets and props for Radcliffe's performance.

"I know that some people were saying that Tulu would just try to hang on to Paula and then try to outsprint her at the finish, like she had done on the track," says Kristiansen. "But 26 miles is a long way and because there are places to attack on the road it isn't as easy to stay with someone in the marathon when they attack you so aggressively like Paula does over such a sustained period of time."

The clock told its own devastating tale. By half-distance Radcliffe had 48 seconds over the chasing group. By 20 miles it was over two minutes, and after a further stunning acceleration it stretched to three. Tulu eventually finished 10 minutes behind.

For mile after mile we squirmed in our seats, not daring to hope Radcliffe could maintain her dominance, trying to calculate how long her advantage would sustain her in the face of a counter-attack and her own fatigue. What did we know? The 25th mile was her fastest, and her winning time of 2hr 18min 56sec, if technically not a world record, was certainly the best marathon ever run by a woman. It was one of the most awe-inspiring pieces of sport theatre I have ever watched.

"I regarded Jim Peters as a superman, and it was quite impossible to believe any woman eventually running comparable times," says Mel Watman, the editor of Athletics International and the doyen of athletics statisticians. "Indeed, one never envisaged a woman running a marathon at all. At the 1952 and 1956 Olympics the longest women's race was 200m and apart from a handful of experimental races the mile was as far as women ever raced on the track.

"Now Paula is running times which only nine British men bettered last year; indeed, she would be close to men's selection for an international vest in the marathon - an unprecedented situation."

At Manchester Metropolitan University, Radcliffe's physiologist Dr Andy Jones was not surprised. "I had a pretty good idea that Paula was going to run 2:18 before she did it at London," he says. "That's what I had her down for, because that's where physiological data was saying she should be running."

But it was Radcliffe's personality which elevated her achievement in London a long way above dry and boring statistics. Out on the road - among the great press of humanity, the rhinos, the ostriches and men in diving suits who, let us not forget, are the essence of the London Marathon - there was a palpable feeling that their Paula had won their race, not some remote and irrelevant parallel event. As word spread of her win among the mass of runners behind, a spontaneous cheer went up, something no one could remember happening before. Paula Radcliffe is one of them, not by virtue of nationality but because, despite her extreme talent, she retains an ordinariness, homeliness and fallibility that every jogger in the park can relate to in the way that they cannot to, say, Haile Gebrselassie.

"Oh, Paula really is as lovely as she seems," says Kristiansen. "I remember the first time I met her she was so polite and nice. I think people can relate to her in the same way they used to be able to do to me because I was running while bringing up a young family.

"I think what she achieved this year means so much more to Paula because of what happened to her before. Everyone could see she was trying as hard as she could to win but was always getting beaten in the final few metres. But whatever happened she remained as nice as before and I know she is the same person now she is being so successful, which I think is very important.

"People are genuinely pleased for her and what she has achieved this year. It is also very important that she has done it clean. It is inspiring and can only be good for the sport because people look at her and begin to believe that anything is possible if someone like Paula can do it."

Yet, like Gebrselassie and indeed Kristiansen before her, Radcliffe has a colossal capacity for hard work that is beyond the comprehension of all but the very physically gifted. She had prepared for London by running twice a day up to 135 miles a week, and fitting in at least two weights, workouts and core stability sessions a week. "She is a physiological phenomenon, which I realised when I first saw her" says Jones. "She has combined those natural talents with mental strength and discipline to reach the level she is at now."

In a year of truly dazzling achievements, concluding with Radcliffe's world-record 2:17:18 in Chicago in October, Kristiansen has no doubts that it was her performance in the London Marathon which set the tone. "I think that gave her belief that she could go on and do everything else she wanted to," she says. "I think this is just the beginning for her."

Guardian Unlimited ' Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001

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