Paula Radcliffe says watching her daughter undergo chemotherapy was ‘horrible’

Celebrated marathon runner Paula Radcliffe has said it was “horrible” to watch her daughter Isla undergo chemotherapy and described it as “the hardest thing a parent can go through”.

A decade on from Radcliffe’s final London Marathon and her 18-year-old daughter, who was diagnosed and treated for cancer in 2020, will be running her first 26.2-mile race in the capital.

The long-distance runner, 51, took Isla to the paediatrician during lockdown after she experienced a variety of symptoms including stomach aches and loss of breath.

“It then moved very quickly. On the Tuesday she visited the doctor, we had a scan on the Wednesday and one week later we were already in the hospital starting the first round of chemo,” she told the Radio Times.

Talking about the treatment, she said: “It’s the hardest thing a parent can go through.

“You can support them and be with them the whole way through, but you can’t do that chemo for them.

“It’s horrible to watch your child suffering through that, but at the same time we believed that if it felt bad, it was killing the cancer.”

She added: “There are things you’re not ready for – either going through it or as a parent.”

“She (Isla) doesn’t know how it has affected her chances of becoming a parent,” she said.

Radcliffe also has a son called Raphael with her husband Gary Lough and spoke about how her daughter’s diagnosis had affected him.

“There was a huge amount of mother’s guilt for the fact that you have to focus more on one child for that period of time,” she said.

Radcliffe will be commentating as part of the BBC team during the marathon, taking place on Sunday.

“It’s an extremely emotional place to be anyway, when you see people turn that corner on the Mall and they realise they’ve done it”, she said.

“But when it’s your little girl doing it, that’s going to be a bit more emotional.”

Radcliffe told The Move Against Cancer Podcast in 2021 that Isla had undergone three rounds of chemotherapy and that it had been “really hard” for their family.

Her career saw her win the London and New York marathons three times each, along with victory in the 2002 Chicago Marathon.

She returned to marathon running for the first time in a decade at the Tokyo Marathon in March and ran the Boston Marathon on Monday.