Struggling Radcliffe would need a miracle to win, admits chief

Dave Collins, the performance director who will lead Britain's athletes to China knowing that the target of five medals will take some achieving, appeared to come closer than any UKA official so far to publicly conceding that Radcliffe's injury problems make her task of winning the marathon almost insurmountable.

Privately, some British officials, working on the information emerging from the self-contained Radcliffe camp at her base in the Pyrenees, are already resigned to the thought that a woman who will have had less than eight weeks of running before lining up for the marathon in Tiananmen Square has no chance of making up for her Athens misery of 2004.

Naturally, because she is arguably the greatest runner British athletics has ever produced, she will be given until as close as 23 hours before the race to make her decision about running.

"It's a race against time," said Radcliffe, after flying in to London for tests on her fractured femur at the Olympic Medical Institute.

Yet many fear the race is already lost, not just because it was only eight weeks ago that specialists told her it would be a miracle if she was able to run in the Olympics but also because her great rival, champion Mizuki Noguchi, of Japan, is said to be running at a far improved level compared to four years ago.

"It would be miraculous [for Radcliffe to win]," Collins admitted. "But I think there is a possibility of her competing otherwise we would not be going down this process. If she goes, she will go ready to perform."

What was most alarming, though, was how little Collins, the man at the helm, appeared to know of Radcliffe's progress in the Pyrenees.

"As far as I believe, from the statements she has issued, she is running at the moment," he said. "But I don't know the schedule she's doing."

Meanwhile, as Dwain Chambers prepared for Thursday's court hearing into his Olympic eligibility, it seemed unlikely that two more of the major contenders for the remaining 100 metres places, Tyrone Edgar and Marlon Devonish, would be fit to race again before Saturday's deadline.

Edgar suffered a hamstring injury in the trials semi-final at the weekend while Devonish has not shaken off the illness which wrecked his 100m chances in Birmingham, so the path is being cleared for Craig Pickering to be granted selection alongside Simeon Williamson, regardless of what happens in the Chambers court case.

If Chambers is picked, Collins made it clear that he would not be treated as a pariah by fellow Team GB athletes. "If he's on the team, he will be treated the same as any other athlete," Collins said. "People don't get on with each other for a variety of reasons but we're part of the same team, we're part of Team GB. We're going to support each other."