Athletics: Accolades galore down Paula Radcliffe Way

British heroine's long-running, record-breaking year is already having a spin-off

Alex Stanton has had little peace all week. The young girls in his training group have been pestering him with the same question: "Is she going to win it?" "They're all excited anyway," he said, "because they're running in the road race – the race to mark the opening of the road on Sunday, the road they're naming after Paula."

Yes, Paula Radcliffe is having a bypass this morning – having a bypass named after her, that is. The Clapham Bypass, a stretch of the A6 near Bedford, will henceforth be known as Paula Radcliffe Way. To commemorate the occasion The Radcliffe Run is being held along it, a 10km race and 5km fun run in which the youngsters from the group coached by Alex Stanton and his wife, Rosemary, will be eagerly participating.

Tonight, in West London, the big question being asked by the girls of Bedford and County Athletics Club will be duly answered, and there will be a few adults in need of a medical bypass if the BBC's Sports Personality of the Year award fails to go Paula Radcliffe's way. Only ballot boxes imported from Florida could possibly stop the runner who has swept all before her this year.

The legacy of Radcliffe's long-running success in 2002 (her world cross country win, her London marathon victory, her Commonwealth Games 5,000m win, her European 10,000m triumph, her world record marathon run in Chicago) is already evident. It can be measured by the number of Bedford and County wannabes busting a gut along Paula Radcliffe Way this morning – and by the fact that the video recorder will be set, in Alex's absence, in the Stanton household tonight. The man who, with the help of his wife, has guided Paula Radcliffe from 299th in the girls' race at the English women's cross country championships to number one female athlete in the world will not be watching the BBC television ceremony. He will be in Medulin, Croatia, watching the European cross country championships.

"If we'd just had one of the girls there I very likely would have thought twice and stayed at home and watched it," he said. "But it's not very often you get two seniors out of the six and one junior, is it?"

Indeed not, but the Great Britain squad for the continental competition happens to include Liz Yelling, Sharon Morris and Katrina Wootton. All three, like Paula Radcliffe, are members of the Bedford and County set and are coached by Alex Stanton. A retired car plant production line manager, Stanton only drifted into coaching (together with his wife, who now devotes herself to the under-13s at the club) in response to a shortage of volunteers when they took their daughter, Kim, to training nights at Bedford Stadium. Two weeks ago he received the UK Coach of the Year award at the Cafe Royal in London. Last year he shared the prize with the England football coach, Sven Goran Eriksson.

"It's been a great journey with Paula because myself and Rosemary have been allowed to develop with her," Stanton, as amiable a soul as his star pupil, said. "It's been a two-way thing. We've picked up a lot from coaching Paula over the years. We've gained a lot from being with her and from other people around her who've been where she is now – like years ago when she was training at altitude and I was lucky enough to spend time chatting with Khalid Skah. You pick up lots of little things along the way and it's a spin- off the other girls have gained from as well."

They certainly have. Yelling finished 254th in the girls' race at the 1986 English women's cross country championships in Leicester, 45 places ahead of Radcliffe. Last year she was fifth in the European cross country championships. And last month the Bedford and County under-17 women's team sped to victory in their age-group national cross country relays, anchored by Wootton, a schoolgirl from Dunstable, who topped the UK under-17 rankings this year at 800m, 1500m and 3,000m. "That just shows how good Alex and Rosemary have become as coaches," Christina Boxer, the Commonwealth 1500m champion of 1982, said.

Alex himself stops short of saying that the Radcliffe inspiration factor might help him to produce another world beater from within the bounds of the Bedford and County club. "There's only so much you can put into a person," he said. "To do what Paula has done you have to be born with a certain something."

On a wider – national – scale, though, Boxer is ideally placed to appreciate the significance of Radcliffe's trail-blazing deeds. As a coach herself, she guides one of the brightest of the young female endurance runners who are emerging in the wake of Radcliffe: Charlotte Moore, the 17-year-old from Bourne-mouth who broke the two- minute barrier in the Commonwealth Games 800m final in the summer.

"The great thing about Paula, and Alex Stanton, is that they've shown what you can do if you stick to what you believe in," Boxer said. "They've had some disappointments over the years and they've come through them all to have a year like this, when everything has come right. Paula is the perfect role model for the likes of Charlotte. We talk about her a lot actually."

That much will come as little surprise to Max Jones, the performance director of UK Athletics. "We're producing some excellent endurance runners among the girls and a lot of it is because of Paula," he said. "It's like when Linford Christie showed the way for all the sprinters. Paula's from Bedford and there she is, beating the best in the world. She's showing the other girls that it can be done. She's a terrific role model for the kids coming through too."

Radcliffe, in fact, is the model Jones and Dave Moorcroft, the chief executive of UK Athletics, are using in a booklet advising emerging youngsters about the art of preparation for athletic performance. They are calling it "Leaving No Stone Unturned", because "that certain something" that Radcliffe has within her is a natural drive to maximise her talent by maximising every possible factor, right down to such minutiae as sucking a lemon first thing in the morning, taking a siesta and having iced baths – all because of the physiological benefits they produce.

Radcliffe's coach leaves no stone unturned either. To avoid waking her with a call and diminishing the endorphins that her sleep brings, Alex Stanton keeps an extra clock at home wound to the time wherever in the world she happens to be – which at 11am GMT today will be watching The Radcliffe Run down Paula Radcliffe Way.