The British public and press have responded with customary squeamishness to the Paula Radcliffe ‘pitstop’. Couching their words in coy cliche and puns which made me, for one, squirm more than too much salmon might have done, the headlines run the gamut of coquettishness from The Sun’s ‘Eesy Peesy’, to the Guardian’s ‘Spend a penny – and win a million dollars’.
I am not sure why, having made such a furore about a distinctly un-British act, the papers stop short of actually reporting the truth – Paula stopped to have a crap, not a piss. The journalists are behaving in a schizophrenic fashion – performing a strange dance where they, like a child in a playground saying ‘poobumwilly’, take great glee in reporting the incident, but stop prudishly short of admitting it was a number two, not a number one.
I have spoken to a few people who have some experience of competitive running, and it has become apparent to me that it is commonplace for marathon runners to ablute while they run. And I have read that Paula did so in Athens last year, when she dropped out at the same distance marker as she stopped briefly this time. I think it is a shame that her winning the marathon, and breaking a world record, is not enough of a story for the press, and so they have to focus on this most prosaic of acts.
And in other marathon news – according to the Evening Standard, ‘the event was marred by the death of a 59-year-old man from Cambridgeshire who collapsed while taking part, police said. He died later in hospital.’
Slipped on a random poo?
Liberal Democrat 94