The treatment of Paula Radcliffe will put off other athletes from sharing their blood data information, believes Scottish hurdler Eilidh Child.

Under siege after she became implicated in blood doping allegations, Radcliffe has vigorously denied any wrong-doing, explaining that her “off-scores”, the measures used to test an athlete’s blood values, were abnormally high due to two being taken immediately after she had raced and one taken following a period of altitude training.

The controversy has dealt a blow to the confidence of athletes who may have previously been willing to publicly share their data, but are now reluctant to do so due to uncertainty surrounding the accuracy of testing, as well as doubts around what it actually is the testers should be looking for.

Child, a long-time advocate of cleaning up the sport, admits the episode has made her reticent to share such information, in case the attempt to be as transparent as possible ends up casting doubts over her integrity as an athlete due to faulty testing procedures.

“I feel really sorry for Paula,” Child said. “She’s obviously someone who has been very supportive of trying to get drugs cheats out of athletics, which is great, and now it’s almost as if she’s been unfairly targeted.

“There hasn’t been enough information given and there’s not been enough research into this. Obviously, her blood data has shown some sort of irregularity, but nobody knows what that is. They’ve not got the right people looking into it and it’s a shame.

“Everybody wants to make the sport cleaner and everybody wants to get the drug cheats out, but I feel like the wrong people are now getting targeted.

“Now, athletes are going to be scared to share their blood data, because they are going to think that if it’s getting into the wrong hands then there’s going to be strange information coming out that will make people think they have been cheating.

“People who are looking into it need to know what they are doing. There needs to be more research, and having met Paula, although I don’t know her too well, but having followed her through the years, I 100 per cent think she’s a clean athlete and it’s a shame it’s happened to her.

“Hopefully now Seb Coe is the president of the IAAF the right steps can be put in place to get the real cheats out of our sport.

“When I heard about the sharing of blood data I thought ‘no problem, I’ll share my information’. But having heard this, I think ‘well, I’m not a doctor, I’m not a scientist, and I don’t really know what it all means’.

“I don’t want to put it out there and then someone says ‘well, that’s not normal’ when it could be something completely innocent.

“It does make you wary, because we all just want to be clean and we want people to be aware of everything, but you also don’t want to be victimised when you’re innocent.

“If we all knew what affects the blood then that’s OK. You would know what it is you were testing for. The trouble is the people who are taking drugs are getting away with it because the testers don’t know what they’re testing for.”

Although Child is sure that in this country at least, the stringent measures in place have ensured British athletes are clean, the cynicism that surrounds any outstanding achievement in the sport saddens her.

“I think the system we have in the UK is very good,” Child said. “We have to give our whereabouts. I’ve got to give an hour every single day that I am where I say I am so I can be tested whenever. That’s not worldwide though, and I think the first thing that should be done is to make it worldwide, that people are available to be tested all the time and you can’t just miss tests.

“I love my sport and I love athletics, but at the moment it’s getting a bad reputation. I want people to go back to loving the athletics, not thinking that this person is cheating or that person is cheating.

“People can perform phenomenally because they’re just brilliant, and you don’t want a doubt cast upon them because people might think they are a cheat. It’s become cynical now. I want it to get back to what it was when I fell in love with the sport.

“People might think I’m naive, but I go on to the track thinking it’s a fair playing field. If you go into it thinking everybody is cheating you would just lose your mind.

“Thankfully, in my event, there’s nobody I know of that has formerly failed a test, so every time I step on to the track I appreciate the other athletes and think they are there and running so fast because they have trained and worked so hard, because that’s why I’m there.

“I would hate to think I’ve worked so hard and trained so hard just to step on to the track with someone who is a better chemist.”

*Eilidh Child was speaking in her role as ambassador for the Beatson Cancer Charity