Paula Radcliffe up and running after long wait

Rick Broadbent, Athletics Correspondent

It has been a long time coming but Paula Radcliffe yesterday confirmed that she is ready to end her 21-month sabbatical and provide a post-Osaka boost to British athletics. The marathon mother said she would make her much-anticipated return in the BUPA Great North Run on Tyneside two weeks on Sunday. “I now feel that I am ready to come out and race well,” she said.

Radcliffe’s last race was on New Year’s Eve, 2005, when she won a 10km event in Madrid, since when she has been sidelined by a foot injury, pregnancy and two stress fractures at the base of her spine. She gave birth to Isla in January, started jogging 12 days later and was targeting the 10,000 metres at the World Championships in Japan only for a sacral injury, suffered during a fittingly marathon 27-hour labour, to delay her comeback.

“I really missed racing through the pregnancy and the setbacks have emphasised this even more,” she said. “I chose a half [marathon] because I wanted a good-quality fast race to blow away the cobwebs.”

Radcliffe and her husband-cum-manager, Gary Lough, made the decision last week and will be keen to see just how much her time off, coupled with the injuries, have affected her. Intriguingly, the Berlin Marathon takes place on the same day, but that would have been too daunting a task for even an athlete of Radcliffe’s calibre to consider. She will probably be tempted by the New York Marathon on November 4, and the organisers will move heaven and earth to accommodate her, but that too would be a huge test after almost two years out. Other events on the horizon include the BUPA Great South Run in Portsmouth in October and the European Cross-Country Championships in Spain in December.

The fact that Radcliffe is returning at half-marathon distance, rather than in a shorter race, suggests she feels confident enough in her body to forgo a softly-softly approach. The festering wounds of Athens, when anti-inflammatory drugs hindered her performance in the marathon and 10,000 metres, mean Newcastle is where she sets off on the road to Beijing. “I wasn’t sleeping before, during or after the \ Olympics,” she said in May. “Gary asked me to consider sleeping pills. We couldn’t go home initially because the media were camped outside our door.” Now she believes she can still be an Olympic contender, not only in China next year, but in London in 2012, when she will be 38.

The staccato nature of her return has clearly been a source of irritation. She was told to take six weeks off in May, after her stress fracture came to light, but was still intending to compete in Osaka at the time. Having been forced to pull out of two World Championships, a London Marathon and a Commonwealth Games through injury since breaking the marathon record in a glittering 2002, Radcliffe does not know whether she can recover her best form. “It has been a really frustrating time recently, especially missing out on Osaka and watching the 10,000 metres, which seemed more open than it has been for years,” she said. In that race Jo Pavey, of Britain, was a gritty fourth and she will also be in the field for the 21km run from Newcastle to South Shields.

Radcliffe, who has twice won the Great North Run, sounded a confident note. “I had to be patient until my body recovered and I have been able to get a good base of decent training in,” she said. “It has underlined to me how much I want to carry on competing for a while yet. I stayed positive and did huge amounts of cross-training while I was injured, but it was still hard. Now that I have no injury, at least the cross-training is paying off in that I can get back racing faster.”

How fast, only time will tell. In Radcliffe’s absence, the Japan-based Briton, Mara Yamauchi, briefly led the marathon at the World Championships before dropping back to ninth. The humidity of Beijing will hold few fears for her, but Radcliffe faces another Herculean labour as she begins what promises to be her most challenging year to date.

McLaren facing large dossier of new evidence in spying scandal

Edward Gorman, Motor Racing Correspondent The case against Lewis Hamilton’s Formula One team, McLaren Mercedes, over allegations that they have cheated this season by using secret technical information stolen from Ferrari consists of a large body of new evidence running to 166 pages in length, The Times has learnt.

As McLaren prepare for their appearance before the FIA’s World Motor Sport Council (WMSC) in Paris tomorrow, it has also become clear that the apparent “amnesty” offered to McLaren’s drivers in return for their cooperation in the FIA’s investigation may not save them from having points docked as part of the team’s punishment.

The dossier of new evidence collected by the FIA is thought to centre not just on e-mail traffic between the McLaren test driver, Pedro De La Rosa, and Hamilton’s teammate, Fernando Alonso, but also on details of the phone and text message traffic between McLaren’s suspended chief designer, Mike Coughlan, and the former Ferrari chief mechanic, Nigel Stepney, supplied to the FIA by the authorities in Italy.

Although the evidence does not include details of what was said in phone calls and texts, the FIA is thought to be able to demonstrate how the rate of calls and messages between Stepney and Coughlan allegedly matches e-mail traffic between Alonso and De La Rosa. The implication being that if the drivers needed a detail checked, they then referred the matter to Coughlan, who passed on queries to Stepney.

The scandal began in early July when Ferrari discovered by chance that Stepney had supplied Coughlan with a 780-page blueprint of Ferrari’s present race car and their research and track operations, an allegation Stepney denies. The information at the heart of the new evidence, however, predates the transfer of the dossier between Stepney and Coughlan in late April and is thought to centre on incidents in March.

It is understood that all 26 members of the WMSC received a copy of the new evidence last Friday, the same day that McLaren were given their own copy of the case against themselves. McLaren will face questioning from WMSC members at the hearing, where Ferrari will also be able to make their own submission before the Council considers its verdict and any sanction should McLaren be found guilty.

McLaren are expected to present a robust defence and will argue that the e-mail traffic was limited in scope and does not show that Ferrari information was used on their race cars. The view among sources close to the team is that the drivers have done nothing wrong and the case linking the e-mails with the phone calls between Coughlan and Stepney is tenuous.

As one source put it: “In terms of the drivers, they haven’t done anything wrong and certainly not done anything that would amount to a serious breach of the regulations.” He described the whole situation as a mess and said it would be very difficult for the FIA to prove its case. “I have no idea how they are going to demonstrate how McLaren used the information,” the source said.

Another element of McLaren’s defence is thought to be the proposition that if they are found guilty, then rival teams such as Renault should also be punished for reasons McLaren have not specified. McLaren’s lawyers have put this point to the FIA, but the organisation has made clear that it considers that irrelevant to its case against McLaren.

During the Italian Grand Prix at Monza last weekend, the FIA published a letter sent by its president, Max Mosley, to all three McLaren drivers requesting that they hand over information they may have had concerning the use of Ferrari information. The letter included the following: “I can confirm, given the importance of this issue, that any information you may make available in response to this letter will not result in any proceedings against you under the International Sporting Code or the Formula One regulations.”

This was taken, by some, to mean that both Hamilton and Alonso would not have championship points removed should McLaren be found to have cheated and the punishment would centre on constructors’ points and a fine. However, The Timesunderstands that this is not the case and that the FIA regards the WMSC as having a free hand when it comes to deciding on any sanctions.

Brian Ashton at a loss after injury to Olly Barkley makes bad day worse

Owen Slot, Chief Sports Reporter, in Paris

As a magnet for bad news, the England squad is becoming a considerable force. That Phil Vickery, the captain, was handed the expected two-match ban yesterday was bad enough, though overshadowed by the hip flexor injury to Olly Barkley, England’s pivotal player, who was taken to hospital for a scan that will indicate today whether he is unavailable for the titanic fixture against South Africa on Friday.

With their two No 10s on the injury list, this England team have about them more than a whiff of Monty Python’s Black Knight. How many more limbs can they lose? And yet they march bravely on.

Exactly who will be doing the marching, though, remains a mystery. When Brian Ashton named his team yesterday, the uncertainties were summed up by the entry at No 22, TBA (to be announced), which could be filled by any number of names. It could be Mathew Tait or, less likely, Dan Hipkiss, both of whom have been ill and in isolation since the weekend.

It could open the door for the unlikely return of Jonny Wilkinson, who was not named in the squad but whose ankle survived a kicking session yesterday, or maybe even Toby Flood to be flown in from Newcastle.

Ashton’s starting XV reflected the poor performance against the United States with the casualties, Lawrence Dallaglio, Joe Worsley and Mark Cueto, making way for Nick Easter, Martin Corry and Paul Sackey, who will play on the left wing with Jason Robinson moving to full back.

A further amendment was required yesterday evening when Vickery fell foul of his citing hearing. The England management were last night considering lodging an appeal against the decision that followed his kick and trip on Paul Emerick, the United States centre, in Lens on Saturday but, for the moment, Matt Stevens is the tight-head prop and the captaincy remains unbestowed.

Ashton preferred not to admit that Dallaglio had been dropped after his unconvincing display against the United States. Though if you have a talismanic big-game player such as Dallaglio and he does not even make the 22 for England’s biggest game since the World Cup final, then alternative interpretations barely figure.

Ashton did explain that Corry’s inclusion over Worsley was a nod to the importance of the lineout on Friday. And he acknowledged, too, that Cueto, who is also not in the 22, had “struggled to find his form”, possibly, he said, because of a groin niggle.

However, for a day at least, England’s whopping toll of poor fortune made their poor form a side issue. Ashton was asked yesterday if this World Cup campaign was already his worst nightmare. The head coach insisted that it was not, though he surely could not have dreamed up worse news than being Wilko-less and then losing Barkley. We cannot even apply Oscar Wilde here; to lose two No 10s may smack of carelessness, but as Ashton observed - his frustration finding expression in a rare shaft of humour - the Barkley injury was another case of pure bad luck.

“As usual with England injuries,” Ashton said, “there was no one anywhere near him. It would be nice to think someone was on the floor and ten people were kicking the hell out of him. But they weren’t.”

The option of Wilkinson making a dramatic last-minute return is fanciful, though not completely ruled out. However, a measure of the disarray was that Ashton was unable to discuss the various permutations left at his disposal. “We’re talking complete speculation here,” was all he could say.

And indeed we are, though it seems that in Barkley’s absence, Mike Catt would move to fly half and Andy Farrell would come in as No 12 and first-choice kicker.

Consider the facts here, though: Catt will be 36 on Sunday and his last international start at No 10 was in the game against Wales in 1999, since when the venue for that match, Wembley, has been knocked down and rebuilt. And Farrell has not stood over a goalkick of note since captaining Great Britain in a rugby league international against Australia at Elland Road nearly three years ago.

Who on earth would be the reserve kicker behind Farrell? The mind boggles, though the situation does, of course, cry out for Flood, who made a fairly decent fist of both jobs – fly half and placekicker – at the latter end of the RBS Six Nations Championship but was left out of the party.

For Flood to be called up, though, another man would have to go home and have their departure signed off by the tournament medical officer. And for Flood to be available for Friday’s match at the Stade de France in Paris, the rules state that he must be in the country 48 hours before the game. That leaves Ashton until 9 o’clock tonight to complete any reshuffle.

England: J Robinson (unattached); J Lewsey (London Wasps), J Noon (Newcastle Falcons), M Catt (London Irish), P Sackey (London Wasps); O Barkley (Bath), S Perry (Bristol); A Sheridan (Sale Sharks), M Regan (Bristol), M Stevens (Bath), S Shaw (Wasps), B Kay (Leicester), M Corry (Leicester), T Rees (London Wasps), N Easter (Harlequins).

Replacements: G Chuter (Leicester), P Freshwater (Perpignan), S Borthwick (Bath), L Moody (Leicester), A Gomarsall (Harlequins), A Farrell (Saracens), A N Other. South Africa squad: Backs: P Montgomery, J P Pietersen, J Fourie, F Steyn, W Olivier, B Habana, A James, A Pretorius, F du Preez, R Pienaar. Forwards: J du Randt, C J van der Linde, B J Botha, J Smit, B du Plessis, J Botha, V Matfield, J Muller, S Burger, J Smith, D Rossouw, W van Heerden.