Paula lays her Athens ghost to rest

"It wasn't about replying to critics or redemption, though. It was just about Paula enjoying herself, running for fun and giving people a bit of a show."

Yet for all that, it sounded as if he couldn't ever believe anyone else giving such a spectacular show so soon after an Olympic nightmare.

"When you go through something as traumatic as Paula endured in Athens, I guess there's going to be some mental scars and any individual would find it hard to recover from it," pondered Lough.

"Yet she's very methodical about how she does things and if anybody can recover from upsets like that, Paula can."

Yes, if anyone can, Paula can - it ought to be the title of her new book. Three months ago, she was drowning in tears. This time, the only ones seemingly in danger of crying were a few normally unsentimental souls at race-day headquarters in the New York Athletic Club.

Thanks to the onset of indigestion caused by a plate of reheated spaghetti bolognese which she'd endured on the eve of the race - bless her, she wouldn't reveal the name of the offending restaurant under cross-examination by the New York press - she felt ill and had a lump in her throat at 23 miles.

"I really felt sick but there was none of the dead and empty feeling of Athens. I just hung on," she said. "I felt totally different. I felt totally myself, nothing like the emptiness and horrible feeling I had then - no dizziness."

And that gutsy determination meant many had lumps in the throat when she overcame this discomfort to prevail by just four seconds in 2hr 23min 10sec, nearly eight minutes slower than her world record yet still the third best ever women's clocking on this unforgiving course. In truth, though, the time has rarely felt less meaningful.

"I would imagine she was very close to breaking down with emotion as she came across that line because I'm quite sure that a lot of people here felt the same way," said David Bedford, the London Marathon race director. "Er, I admit I was one of those who was struggling to hold it all together."

Like the rest of the audience, he sensed it would be just too painful to see her beaten. Radcliffe, though, made it sound as if it would not have been a body blow had she been edged out by Chepkemei after their final five-mile joust from Madison Avenue Bridge because the main thing was just to "come back feeling happy and feeling like myself again". She added: "It was about enjoying the race and enjoying the atmosphere."

But this was not entirely convincing. "I believe the difference in her psyche would have been enormous if she'd lost," said Bedford. "I don't think she would have retired or anything like that but I really believe she needed that win. She needed to be able to wake up in the morning and think that Athens wasn't her last race.

"What she got back here was her own self-esteem. If I go back to my career in 1972, it took a long time for me to draw a line under my disappointment at the Munich Olympics until I broke the world record the next year. It was like ending a nightmare."

Radcliffe's is over too now, surely. Today, she was looking forward to staying on for some serious shopping at Macy's here, a treat which may be enhanced by yesterday's winner's cheque for $140,000 (£76,000) and an appearance package supposedly in the region of $500,000 (£270,000). She even won a Smart car to bomb around Loughborough in.

Yet there really are things that no amount of money could have given her. Like that restored self-esteem.

Hadn't Radcliffe made him proud out there, the Americans demanded to know. "Yes," Lough told them. "But then I'm always proud of her." Long may British sport continue to feel the same way too about his fascinating lady.