Paula Radcliffe reveals how a school relay race blunder helped daughter Isla come to terms with her hair loss from ovarian cancer battle at 13 - as teen follows in her mother's footsteps by completing 2025 London Marathon
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Paula Radcliffe has voiced her pride for her daughter Isla's resilience and how she's bounced back following her battle with ovarian cancer battle at just 13 years old.
The long-distance runner and three-time winner of the London Marathon, 51, was on the sidelines at this year's race, cheering on her 18-year-old daughter on Sunday as she crossed the finish line.
Isla was running to raise money for Children with Cancer UK, a charity close to her heart, after she was diagnosed with germ cell ovarian cancer in August 2021, needing surgery and chemotherapy.
Speaking on Spinning Plates with Sophie Ellis-Bextor ahead of the big race, Paula opened up on how Isla still dealt with the aftereffects of her cancer battle, despite receiving the all-clear in December 2021.
She said: 'I think the biggest thing for her, is that loss of that childhood. Because at 13 you're still very much still coming to terms with so many things. And those normal teenage things, she didn't have - she was just kind of removed from those.
'She was forced to grow up and process that so much more quickly. And on the one hand she did grow up and it gave her a huge sense of maturity and balance.
'But she'd sometimes come home from school after she'd gone back and go, "Mum I don't understand why this drama is such a big thing to my friends, because it's nothing".
'So that maturity was really hard for her to process because it was almost like she'd been forced to grow up in an area that her peers still weren't there. So she was kind of alone in terms of who she would talk to and process that with.'
Paula also spoke about how 'traumatic' it was when Isla's hair began falling out due to the gruelling chemotherapy.
Isla previously admitted that she found that the hardest part of her treatment, previously telling The Times: 'I cried the most when I lost my hair. The chemo does not affect you much on the outside but losing my hair was a big thing.'
To help her cope, her brother Raphael, now 14, would allow his sister to blow-dry his hair to compensate for not being able to style her own.
Paula recalled: 'When the hair falls out it's really traumatic. I didn't understand how traumatic, it basically just mattes and then you have no option but to keep cutting those knots out.
'It got to the point that Isla, who was so desperate to keep her hair, was like, "Just cut it out I can't deal with the trauma every morning".'
Paula went on to explain how to recall how taking part in a relay race when she returned to school proved instrumental in helping Isla come to terms with her shorter hair.
She explained: 'Isla has this competitive instinct as well. She'd gone back to sport and she was insisting she could still run with a wig.
'I think because a part of her was thinking the rest of the class doesn't realise and thinks that is her hair. But the wig came off in the middle of the relay race and she was absolutely mortified.
'But one of her friends snatched it up and took her by the hand, because she'd run indoors, and said, "You get back out and you finish running without it."
'There was all tufts of hair from the hairnet sticking off in all different directions. But from that day on she never wore the wig again'.
Paula added: 'She actually carried off short hair really well, but I think she thought it was a bigger deal than it was, and in the end that being a more dramatic way to lose it was like ripping the plaster off, "Now everyone knows, let's get on with it".'
The marathoner also explained how even years later Isla was still dealing with going through such a difficult ordeal, revealing that she finally took the step of getting psychiatric help in 2023, after having another cancer scare.
She recalled: 'There are some times she doesn't want to talk about and doesn't want to remember and she has completely blocked those away. But I think that's okay so long as she's dealt the underlying trauma.
'That came to a head about two years after she'd had the tumour removed, when we had a scare after they saw something on the scans and we were pulled back in and she had a three-hour surgery, a laparoscopy and a caesarean, trying to find this shadow that actually wasn't there.
'And they came out saying as parents that it's good news because there's nothing there, and I thought that's great but how do I explain to my almost 16-year-old that she just had a three hour surgery for essentially nothing?
'And that was the point where she said, "I need proper psych care, I need a psychologist to talk to".
'She was really aware enough to realise the first time she went through it, she didn't have a choice and just got though it. But now this reignited all of those fears and she thought she was going back into that again.
'She was mature enough to say I need that now and that was something she couldn't just deal with us as a unit, she needed the proper care.'
Despite everything she'd been through, Paula was full of pride for her daughter for how far she'd come, saying: 'To see her doing how well she's doing, I'm so proud of the journey she has taken.'
Speaking about her decision to do the marathon this year, she said Isla had been determined to do her bit for charity.
Paula said: 'She keeps saying to me, "Mum I'm not trying to run a really fast marathon, I just want to get around to show that I can do it.
'I want to raise money for Children with Cancer UK because I appreciate that I am the lucky one and there are kids that aren't that lucky and I want to try and make a difference there." And I really respect that'.
While reflecting on her thoughts about her daughter doing the 26.2 mile trek that she had famously won herself three times, she said: 'I want her to do something I love doing and enjoy it. And I want her to say "Maybe I get it now, I get why my mum is so passionate about getting out their for her run".
'All I want is for her to finish with a smile on her face, having enjoyed it, not crying her eyes out and hating every minute of it.'
Isla successfully finished the London Marathon on Sunday at 3.02pm, with Paula videoing the inspirational moment.
In a clip shared to her Instagram Stories, she can be heard cheering, 'go Isla, go Isla', and captioned the video: 'when your little girl has had few finish lines - but she has her own. Well done Isla'.
Paula - who competed in four Olympic Games and won gold in the World Championships in Helsinki in 2005 - previoulsy told how her most gruelling marathon was dealing with Isla's diagnosis and its aftermath over a tormenting two-year period.
Isla was diagnosed during the Covid pandemic - meaning that Paula was the only member of her family who was allowed to be at her side as she fought the disease.
Paula's father Peter, who had helped launch her on the road to success, died just weeks earlier aged 73 after falling sick while restrictions were in place.
She said: 'I'll never forget the fear when someone tells you something is wrong with your baby. It is the scariest thing in the world.'
Paula told how she took Isla to the paediatrician after she experienced a number of symptoms including chronic stomach pain, loss of breath and bleeding.
She said this week: '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.'
Describing how the experience was far more challenging than any Olympic competition, Paula has spoken of her feelings of 'panic and helplessness'.
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.'
Paula and husband Gary Lough, a former middle distance runner and athletics coach, moved to the south of France in 2005 and live in a village just outside Monte Carlo with Isla and son Raphael, 14.
The couple met at Loughborough University and Gary helped coach Paula on the road to glory winning a series of major titles and marathons before retiring 10 years ago.
Gary went on to work with Olympic legend Sir Mo Farah while Paula's most memorable victory in London saw her set a world record time of two hours, 15 minutes and 25 seconds. No woman ran faster until Brigid Kosgei of Kenya finally broke the record in 2019.
