Holmes from home

If Mutola wins the 800m, she will be just one victory away from collecting an unprecedented $ 1million jackpot as the only athlete to remain unbeaten in all six Golden League competitions this season. It will also confirm her as unbackable favourite for a third World Championship two-lap triumph in Paris to go with her Olympic, two Commonwealth, five World Indoor and four World Cup golds. Astoundingly, it would be Mutola's 11th successive 800m victory-at the Weltklasse, the annual stellar meeting where the competition is so tough they call it the two-hour Olympics. One of sport's great sequences tells you everything about her unbreakable makeup. She hasn't had a significant injury since 1991 and next year will compete in her fifth Olympics. She's still only 30.

Holmes? Well, her 1500m outing tonight is the start of another desperate salvage operation. You have to go back to 1995 to find her last season which wasn't disrupted by injury or illness. This year has sadly been no different as she's seemingly spent more time rehabilitating in the pool than on the track, having twice twisted her ankle and having been sidelined for over two months by a recurring calf problem.

She's effectively had only three weeks' uninterrupted training since the root of the injury was traced to a nerve problem in her back and, feeling like a pin cushion after having a series of painful injections, she is belatedly on track again, having won the London Grand Prix 1500m last Friday and recorded a sub two-minute 800m in Berlin over the weekend.

If it was anyone else, you'd say she has no chance in the 1500m in Paris in less than a fortnight. Think of 2000, though, when she was advised by her orthopaedic surgeon that she'd probably never run again after suffering a devastating series of six injuries from hip to groin to Achilles. Two months later, she won Olympic 800m bronze.

Indeed, in between all the countless hours spent in hospitals, Holmes has somehow managed to win 10 championship medals. "Margo tells me, 'If you had more luck, you'd have been as good as Maria if not better'," she said. "It's because I've got so much passion for what I do that I keep going. After all the downsides, when I get a medal, it still makes it worthwhile."

This year's woes have tested her like never before, though. "An extra drive and determination keeps dragging me back but I've kept thinking 'God, not again' and have never felt so down in terms of confidence. Maria has been great. She keeps telling me to get my head together, to sort it out because she thinks I've got so much I can still achieve. She believes in me as much as I used to believe in myself."

Sometimes, though, it must be difficult for Mutola to empathise. "Maria's achieved everything and, though she still has her dreams too, she can't understand it if I get negative because she's never known the struggles and disappointments I've endured."

From the age of 15 when, as a football starlet, she exchanged her boots for running shoes and competed in the Seoul Games, Mutola has made regal progress as Mozambique's national heroine. "She's treated like a queen there yet I think her awesome achievements worldwide haven't earned her the recognition she deserves," said Holmes. "I told her if she was British, she'd be as famous as David Beckham."

After the end of the season, the pair of them are planning to make the trip to Mutola's hometown of Maputo, which is four hours' drive from Johannesburg. "You can be sure she'll have another gold to take home," said Holmes. "As for me? Well, I believe I can still win a medal in Paris too. Physically and in my heart, I know it can be done. Now I've just got to get my head to believe it."