Radcliffe a runner for best book

Sports Books 2004/Athletics: The book that got the pages turning fastest was based on a story out of Athens, even if the Olympics only provide the climax. Paula Radcliffe's autobiography is not just one of the best books written about running; it is one of the best books written about the fine line between success and failure in any sport.

It is called Paula, My Story So Far (Simon & Schuster, c a26.10), for obvious reasons. Radcliffe is a long way off retiring, and after what happened in Athens, won't be doing so until after Beijing in 2008.

This book builds slowly and steadily towards Athens. Typical of Radcliffe's running style, it moves along at a galloping pace, never touching the point of boredom, and providing a constant fascination as to what's going to happen next. Bringing in David Walsh of the Sunday Times as ghostwriter has clearly helped in that regard.

All her highs and lows before Athens are addressed candidly and often bluntly. Plus that often misunderstood relationship with her husband Gary Lough.

But there are mostly lows. At 21 she ran the 5,000 metres at the 1995 World Championships in Gothenburg and finished fifth, the race won by Sonia O'Sullivan. "It was no failure to finish fifth," she says. "But there were some reservations, and a touch of disappointment." Soon she was taking that kind of disappointment almost for granted. Fifth in the 1996 Olympics; second in the world cross country in 1997 and fourth in the World Championships; fourth in the Sydney Olympics in 2000, fourth again in the 2001 world Championships, and so on.

A large part of this book reads more like something from the literature of pathology than sport, and injury always seems just a page away - and not just the usual calf or knee strains. Then having finally made her breakthrough in the marathon, the 2003 World Championships in Paris were targeted as the chance to finally prove herself on the track.

First, though, she bangs her right leg against a food trolley in a hotel. By running through that she gets a slightly twisted pelvis, and that restricts the movement in her leg. When that's finally sorted she swallows a fly while out training, which brings on a coughing fit, and leads to a bilateral pneumothorax, or two partially deflated lungs. She misses the World Championships.

Still, by the start of 2004 Radcliffe is without doubt the best women's marathoner in the world. By around four minutes. In the months before the Athens Olympics she is widely regarded as unbeatable. In the final two chapters of her book Radcliffe gradually reveals why she was never going to win.

It has nothing to do with the heat, nor the pressure. It was simply a culmination of misfortune. Back in March she strains a hamstring, then they find a hernia. A month before Athens she steps on a pine cone while training in Font-Romeu. Things go steadily downhill from there.

"Unless my leg actually dropped off," she says, "there was no way I wasn't going to be on that start-line. The irony and the heartache was that, for much of 2004, I was running as well as, or better than ever. It was just when I most needed it, my body was unable to cope with the strain and stress it was placed under in trying to recover from that injury in time".

From there she takes the reader through every agonising moment of the Olympic marathon. In the end we feel like we're sitting there with her on that kerbside in Athens. It has to be one of the lowest points of any sporting story, but there is nothing defeatist in the way Radcliffe has told it. Without doubt the athletics book of the year.

Outside of the Athens Olympics the other main athletics event of the year was the 50th anniversary of Roger Bannister's first four-minute mile. With that anniversary came a whole selection of books recounting Bannister's great feat. Bannister himself updated his own autobiography, The First Four Minutes (Sutton Publishing, c a11.59), which also remains a unique insight into sport's truly amateur era.

Neal Bascomb thoroughly relived the race in question with The Perfect Mile (Harper-Collins-Willow, c €24.65), but the quest to run the four-minute began over two centuries ago. That story is told best by John Bryant in 3:59.4, The Quest to Break the 4 Minute Mile, (Hutchinson, c €21.74) not simply because of the detail, but also because of the beautiful photographs. Any one of those books would prove essential additions to any sporting library.

This year also produced another outstanding book from another remarkable era in athletics - the Ovett-Coe middle distance rivalry. The Perfect Distance: Ovett and Coe - The Record Breaking Rivalry (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, c €21.74) is by writer Pat Butcher.

Finally, though not strictly an athletics book, Maurice Ahern's work of fiction Dare to Run (Top Print, 9.99) is partly based on his experiences within the sport. For years linked with the Donore Harriers club in Dublin, Ahern bases his story on a black South African athlete named Solomon Rumalo and the pursuit of his dream to become a world-class athlete. It is an inspiring, perceptive read that touches on the harsh realities of world athletics.