Radcliffe's biggest test

And nobody is leading the fight with more commitment and courage than a particular athlete, Paula Radcliffe. I am a sports lover who is thrilled by top performances in other arenas - like Brian Lara's 375 or Maradona at his best - yet this year at the London Marathon, the Commonwealth Games and Munich, I've seen Paula produce breathtaking runs which are up there with sport's finest moments.

Yet the sad inevitability is that, today, the price of running fast is that someone, somewhere will point the finger of suspicion.

Maybe it's just part of the fragility of human beings that some will always look for reasons to distrust or discredit others more successful than themselves, especially someone with the obvious integrity of an athlete who has made such a very public stand in the fight, and who is one of the most important athletes in the world.

When I heard that a foreign newspaper had cast aspersions on her performances, it made me very angry. I knew how terrible it must have felt for her because when I broke the 5,000 metres world record with a breakthrough performance 20 years ago, it was hard to cope with the small pockets of innuendo which followed it.

When I talked to Paula after her magnificent 10,000 metres win, she was in a dilemma. Part of her wanted to have all the results of her drugs tests published on the UK Athletics website to prove that she was being as open as possible, while another part of her thought 'Well, the more I talk about it, the more my name gets associated with drugs rumours'.

Perhaps because she's so closely associated with the campaign against drugs, this problem may always be with her. Knowing that you have achieved something fantastic, and that you have done it fairly, but that others will cast doubts on your achievement, is an awful thing to have to live with.

But I know Paula is strong enough to cope with it and that her strength can only be reinforced by the knowledge that not just those closest to her but indeed the whole of the British population believe in her implicitly.

I believe that hers is an absolutely selfless stand. To become so active and high-profile in the anti-drugs campaign could have been a diversion for someone who is so single-minded in her approach to be the best athlete she can, but I think she's used it as a motivation.

She's a nugget. We shouldn't always expect sports people to be role models because they show the same weaknesses and flaws as the rest of us. Yet Paula is a complete person; generous, caring, diligent and utterly professional in what she does.

She's the most meticulous person I've ever come across, leaves no stone unturned in her preparation and gives as much as she takes.

She has produced performances which are difficult to comprehend but they are possible within her mindset. She's important because I sense people, not just in Britain but across the world now, see someone giving everything of herself so completely and fairly to push barriers beyond the norm that they cannot help but admire.

She comes across as a beacon for our sport, yet I believe essentially that she's no different to the overwhelming majority of athletes.

I trust in the rest of the British team just as I trust in her.

My guess is that even if Paula had got to the end of her career without winning a track gold, the fate of most athletes, she would have still felt immensely fulfilled because she did everything in her power to be as good as she could be without seeking any short cuts.

Because although medals are supposed to be the currency of success in sport, actually they are not. Athletics has only done for Paula's self-esteem exactly what it does for the 30,000 who cross the line every year in the London Marathon. There's no difference between her medal and theirs because, ultimately, they represent the most satisfying success of all. That is, being able to look inwards and know you did everything you could without cheating yourself.

David Moorcroft is chief executive of UK Athletics and former 5,000 metres world record holder