Olympian-turned-pundit Paula Radcliffe has experienced the highest of highs and lowest of lows during her career. From smashing world records to winning the London Marathon three times and now voicing the BBC's commentary for the Paris 2024 Olympics, the 50-year-old has achieved so much. But in 2020, her whole world came crashing down when a doctor broke the news that her daughter Isla, then 13, had a tumour growing on one of her ovaries.
It was a shattering blow for Paula and husband and former coach Gary Lough, who also share their 10-year-old son Raphael. The couple met at Loughborough University and moved to Monaco in 2005, where they have brought up their family. Radcliffe, who is still the British marathon record holder, "burst into tears" when she was told about Isla.
Speaking to the Mirror in 2021, said: "I was given the diagnosis that nobody wants to hear when the doctor said Isla had cancer. The doctor had asked Isla to sit in the waiting room before telling me what it was. I burst into tears but had to stop crying and pull myself together before Isla came back into the room a few minutes later.
The doctor then explained the diagnosis to Isla." Small signs that something might be amiss with Isla's health had begun a few months earlier, when she suffered a pain in her bladder and started bleeding between periods. Paula knew something was wrong so made an appointment with a paediatrician, and after scans at a hospital in nearby Nice, the results came in.
Isla had a ma.