Lewis fears stylish Barber

Her main coach Frank Dick believes that, despite a subsequent illness, Lewis has made enough progress to "be pretty confident she can challenge for a medal". Well, bronze is maybe just about possible in a field with no great depth of quality, but even knowing her remarkable competitive nature, Lewis can't hope to match the big two. Catch up is the toughest game of all when you're 30 with nothing to prove.

If Barber's return has been much more spectacular, perhaps it is because it is still fired by the thought that, unlike Lewis, she never really fulfilled her ultimate ambition. Barber had gone to the Olympics as favourite after her scintillating world championship triumph over the Briton in Seville in 1999 had made her a French national heroine as well as a bit of a fashion icon.

Yet, in Sydney, her bid for gold lasted only two events before she succumbed to injury and, a year later, she blew her defence of the world title with three no-throws in the shot.

She then lost all of last year to a nerve problem in her left foot, an injury which "terrified" her when at times her foot was left paralysed. Like the drama queen she is, she tried to take her mind off the woes by taking singing and acting lessons.

"Every time I get up now, I thank God for this life," says 28-year-old Barber. "I'm really grateful because some sports people never get the chance to come back. Look at Martina Hingis . . . "

Ironically, while Lewis turned to Arbeit to guide her return, Barber moved to Los Angeles to train under Bob Kersee, who as husband and coach of the great double Olympic heptathlon champion Jackie Joyner-Kersee, has had to put up with drugs innuendo down the years. On the face of it, the link-up has been more successful than Lewis's association with Arbeit which, if nothing else, has to be considered an astonishing PR own goal for a woman who before Sydney had the golden touch in this area. Not that the International Association of Athletics Federations care about

Arbeit's presence at the training tracks with Lewis here. Why would they when they actually employ the man to lead coaching development courses?

Barber, meanwhile, roared back with a season-leading 6,694 points at a meeting in June, two points better than Kluft's European Cup-winning effort in Tallinn.

Now back in Paris and fresh from a sensational 12.88sec run over the 100metre hurdles here at the weekend, France, which has as few medal hopes as Britain, see the heptathlon as the championship highlight.

Barber keeps getting asked 'What do you think of Kluft?' but nobody asks her about Lewis any more. This weekend, even if she can't win, it's Lewis's task to at least demonstrate she's making enough progress to contemplate a serious defence of her Olympic crown. It's time for her to get people talking about her athletics again rather than about her coach.