Anyone involved in British athletics has been watching Helen Clitheroe run for her country for more than 13 years.
They’ve seen her run 800m, 1500m, 3000m and 5000m. They’ve seen her try the 3000m steeplechase, and turn out time and again, valiantly; at world and European cross country championships all over the world.
As long as ago as 1998 she was a 1500m finallist at the Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur, and in Manchester four years later she won her one and only international medal – a bronze.
Until yesterday, that is, when at the age of 37, the green-eyed Lancashire lass put nine years of frustration behind her with a dogged and disciplined performance to win the European indoor 3000m title against a field of former champions and younger-limbed opponents.
Twice fourth at 1500m and twice a finallist at world indoors, Clitheroe must have thought her time would never come. But when Olesya Syreva attacked on the final lap the Briton who’s been the best in Europe at this event all winter wasn’t going to let her golden moment slip by.
Finding the sprinting speed of a woman 15 years younger, Clitheroe held off the Russian by just three hundredths of a second in 8:56.66.
“I can't believe it,” she said. “It's what I’ve been dreaming of but never quite daring to say out loud. Even when they said it was me I thought, 'Wait, wait wait, it can't be me'.”
When victory was confirmed on the giant scoreboard, Clitheroe, the oldest medallist in this event by a full four years, set off on a lap of honour earned over nearly a decade and a half of hard training and endless competition.
“This is what I’ve been waiting for all these years,” she said. “There have been many years of trying, and to have a gold medal? To win a gold medal when I’m team captain? Oh my gosh – I’m going to enjoy this.”
It was as team captain that Clitheroe delivered a rousing speech on the eve of the championships. 'Surprise everybody,' she told her teammates. 'Defy expectations.”
No one in British athletics has done that more than her this year. Indeed, it was only last summer that she was contemplating life on the scrapheap.
A British record holder at 3000m steeplechase, she’d missed out on the European outdoors in Barcelona and suffered yet another near-miss when finishing fourth for England at the Commonwealth Games in Delhi.
No longer funded by UK Athletics, she wondered whether it was still worth the effort. “In the last couple of years there have been times when I’ve walked off the track, depressed, with my head down, and you just think: ‘What am I doing this for?’
“It’s just because my husband kept believing in me,” said the former lifeguard. “It’s just great to get a bit of payback for all of the hard work I’ve put in over the years.”
If Neil Clitheroe’s loving support was crucial, so too was Clitheroe’s first spell of altitude training at a UK Athletics camp in Kenya late last year, and again in January.
By the end of that month, Clitheroe was pulling on a British vest yet again for her first outing of 2011 at the Glasgow International match – and the results were immediately clear. Clitheroe suddenly appeared like an athlete reborn, a runner with a new strength and confidence.
Often hesitant and hopeful in the past, she now simply ignored her opponents and ran solo to a new stadium record of 8:52.31, eclipsing the previous best in Kelvin Hall set by Liz McColgan, the former world 10,000m champion, some 20 years earlier.
Ironically, McColgan had been one of the coaches advising Clitheroe in Kenya. “I didn’t realise I’d beaten Liz’s record,” she said at the time. “She was one of the coaches out there so she might be a bit gutted. But hopefully she’ll still have a smile on her face.
“You never know how you’re going to feel coming down from altitude but I’m really feeling the benefits of it. I knew my training had gone well but you can never tell quite how it’s going to feel.”
It’s continued to feel good over the following weeks. At the British championship in Sheffield she turned in another front-running display to destroy her domestic rivals, and at the Grand Prix in Birmingham a week later she played her part in a world class 3000m, finishing fourth behind Ethiopia’s Senteyahu Ejigu’s world leading run in 8:39.81 – a personal best by more than 10 seconds and the quickest time in Europe.
If Clitheroe’s role as favourite in Paris brought a new kind of pressure, it certainly didn’t show as she cruised through the heats on Saturday morning and then produced a near flawless performance in the final.
Eschewing her front-running instincts, she sat watchfully on the leader’s shoulder as first Russia’s Yelena Zadorozhnaya and then Spain’s Dolores Checa took turns at the front.
“During the race I was thinking ‘It’s slow, will I be able to kick?’ I just kept pushing,” said Clitheroe.
She took the lead with 300m to go and pushed again. Layes Abdullayeva, the Azerbaijani who’s 18 years the Briton’s junior, stuck to her heels followed by Syreva and Lidia Chojecka, the 34-year-old Pole who won this title in 2005 and 2007.
Surely she couldn’t be fourth again. But that was the old Helen Clitheroe. The new one responded to Chojecka’s surge and called on her new-found power, built on all those extra miles of training, to keep out the advancing Russian.
“I still didn’t know even when I crossed the line. I could feel the Russian coming up on the outside,” she said. “I thank everyone – my family, my coach.”
And her husband, of course. Mrs Clitheroe may be in her late 30s, but the European champion no longer thinks of retirement, only the future.
“My dream is to run in the Olympics in London, and this just makes me believe that I can get on the team.”