Paula Radcliffe’s physical therapist has defended her reputation after she said that she had been “effectively implicated” in the recent blood-doping scandal.
Gerard Hartmann told the Irish Independent: “I would bet my house and all that I have that Paula Radcliffe never took a performance-enhancing drug in her whole athletics career.”
He added: “Between 2001 and 2008 I worked with her almost exclusively and in that period, I never in my life saw anything but an athlete who deplored and fought against performance-enhancing drugs in sport. She was very against anyone who’d take advantage. Her principles are for clean sport.
“I lived with her in a house in Font Romeu and in the same apartment in Albuquerque. I would absolutely swear on my life that Paula Radcliffe is the most sincere, genuine, anti-performance-enhancing drug athlete I have ever come across.”
Radcliffe has insisted she has never cheated “in any form whatsoever at any time in my career”, following a parliamentary select committee hearing into doping allegations that she said implicated her by making allusions to a British winner of the London Marathon.
“These accusations threaten to undermine all I have stood and competed for, as well as my hard-earned reputation. By linking me to allegations of cheating, damage done to my name and reputation can never be fully repaired, no matter how untrue I know them to be,” said Radcliffe, who in 2003 set the marathon world record of 2hr 15min 25sec in London.
Hartmann, based in Limerick, said: “Her world record is the only crime she committed, because it’s too good a time.”
