Athletics: Ceplak keeps up confident front before the grudge match against Holmes

European champion prepares for London showdown with British rival who refuses to apologise for drugs slur

Jolanda Ceplak comes from a small town in Slovenia, which, given that it has approximately two million inhabitants, is not so large itself. So when a crowd of around 200 people turned out to welcome the newly-ensconced European 800 metres champion home to Velenje, it represented a fair proportion of local support.

The 25-year-old bleached blonde phenomenon had just completed a helicopter tour of her country, during which she gained some kind of a reading of how much her exploits on the track this year have meant to her fellow citizens.

When the helicopter touched down for the final time, Ceplak was met by three bands, one of which played a song in her honour. "It was an ordinary song but they put my name in it,'' she said.

But soon the mood changed. Slovenian television interviewed her and began asking about the acrimony in Munich following the 800m final when Britain's Kelly Holmes, whom Ceplak had considered a friend, appeared to cast strong doubts over the legitimacy of her performance.

Having chased the Slovenian down the home straight to earn a bronze medal, the 30-year-old former army PT instructor spoke first to BBC TV about "doing it cleanly'', and then to reporters in the mixed media zone who asked her if she thought she could have beaten Ceplak. "There was no way of catching her,'' Holmes said. "Take your own guesses. I know I ran fairly and with progression.''

The inference, you might have thought, was clear, although Holmes – who did not clap or shake Ceplak's hand on the rostrum – backtracked the following day. Certainly Ceplak, who shares a manager with the British runner and has travelled and breakfasted with her all around the European circuit, thought so.

"Kelly Holmes owes me a big apology,'' she said after the race. "She says she did it fairly and cleanly. Well I did, too. I train so hard I cry. I've never heard anything like this from her before.'' Since returning from Munich, Ceplak has been more reluctant to speak about the incident. Slovenian TV, for instance, swiftly found themselves with no one to talk to.

But there could be further awkwardness for Ceplak at Crystal Palace next Friday when she is due to meet Holmes over 800m in the Norwich Union Grand Prix. It looks like the biggest grudge match on that ageing track since Zola Budd and Mary Decker were paid £90,000 and £60,000 respectively to get it on again a year after their collision in the 1984 Olympic 3000m final which left the American weeping and cursing as she lay on the infield.

The vexed situation has clearly confounded the agent both runners share – Robert Wagner, a highly experienced operator who had managed appearances for numerous British athletes including Sally Gunnell and Colin Jackson.

After the outbursts in Munich, Wagner cut a bemused figure and his sense of bafflement appeared in no way diminished this week as he reflected on the behaviour of a runner whose misjudgement, in his opinion, contributed to her failure to progress beyond the 1500m first round which got under way at 10.20am on the day after the 800m final.

"Kelly spoiled Jolanda's party in Munich,'' said Wagner, who still acts for both athletes. "When I heard about some of the things she said, I thought: 'What is going on?'' She absolutely messed herself up. It was her best 800m time of the season and nobody cared. Nobody noticed she got the bronze.

"A number of agents including myself have a problem with athletes talking to TV 30 seconds after a race. Some athletes say stupid or emotional things without thinking. Half of them don't see their own race. We see it better than they do.

"The two girls get along. It wasn't as wild as it looked. But what Kelly said was wrong because it left room for speculation. I spoke to her after midnight following the 800m final. She couldn't get to sleep. She had a maximum six hours' sleep before her 1500m heat the next day. That is not good preparation. She caused herself a big problem.''

For Wagner, this must have seemed horribly like déjà vu all over again following the wobbly thrown by Austria's Stephanie Graf five months ago after her demoralising defeat to Ceplak in Vienna.

Austria's Olympic skiing champion, Hermann Maier, was waiting in the wings to present the home girl with a gold medal. But Ceplak outsprinted Graf to win the world indoor 800m title in a world record of 1min 55.82sec, more than three seconds faster than her previous best. In the aftermath, Graf left Wagner and cast similar aspersions on Ceplak's ability to the ones Holmes made.

Ceplak was not the first thin blonde at the European Championships to lead from the gun and blow her opponents away with an outstanding time. Three days before her race, Britain's Paula Radcliffe, a high-profile anti-doping campaigner, had done just that in the 10,000m final.

"I watched Paula's final,'' Ceplak said this week. "She is really good because she runs her races the way she wants.'' Radcliffe's progression in her career has come from relentless application. Ceplak says that has been her route also, although her career has not followed the steady upward curve of the Briton's.

A talented runner as a youngster – she still holds the Slovenian junior 800m record with a time of 2min 10.50sec recorded as a 13-year-old – Ceplak experienced a dip in her career in 1998 and 1999 after which, she maintains, she began a new training regime with her coach, Alec Sjoberne.

"I had never trained before with sprinting or lifting weights,'' she said. "But if I want something I am going to do it, and if I say I'm going to run good I try to be the best.''

Her record this year will guarantee her an invitation to the International Association of Athletic Federations annual gala in Monte Carlo, and Ceplak – who has more than 50 pairs of dress shoes and a wardrobe full of gowns – has already picked out her garment of choice. It will be a rare opportunity for her to show off her finery given her predilection for wearing only casual dress outside her home.

"I look good in my clothes,'' she said. "But I feel uncomfortable when I wear them outside because I think that everybody looks at me. So I dress up, then sit and watch TV.'' Unfortunately for Ceplak, there are some within the sport who believe it is not just her dresses that she hides.

But Wagner believes the apparent sudden rise in performance is merely her making up for lost time after a mid-career lapse in focus which coincided with her marrying a local businessman, Alec Ceplak. Another factor may have been the long absences of the other Alec in her life because he was working in San Diego, from where he communicated with his runner via e-mail.

Ceplak brushes aside the latter idea at least. "I need only the paper instructions,'' she said. "I'm 25 now not 15, so it is not lonely. I have a lot of reserves from my training and I know I can run faster.''

The odds are that her speed will earn her another victory in London this week, and the likelihood of another difficult evening. She chooses not to speculate. "There's no difference for me running at Crystal Palace,'' she said this week. "It's going to be the same. I forget now everything.'' Holmes, meanwhile, has still to proffer an apology. Although sometimes, saying sorry just isn't enough.

Jolanda Ceplak: The life and times

Name: Jolanda Ceplak.

Born: 12 September 1976, Celije, Slovenia.

Height: 5ft 5in.

Weight: 7st 12lb.

Family: Husband, Alec.

Interests: "Sitting in her living room watching TV, relaxing and doing nothing at all."

Major Titles: European Championships 800m 2002. European Indoor Championships 800m 2002. European Cup for Clubs 800m 2002.

Athletics career: Started her running career at 11 years of age with cross- country and all distances from 400m to 3000m. First major breakthrough at junior level with fourth place in the 1993 European Junior Championships when 17 followed by bronze in 1995. Experienced difficulty making the transition from junior to senior level. Changed focus, switching from 1500m to 800m in 1998. Adjusted training programme, which produced marked improvement with fourth place at the European Indoor Championships in Ghent in 2000. Unbeaten for 11 consecutive races between March and June, establishing herself alongside Mutola and Graf in the world's top three.

Highlights: Defeating the world No 1, Stephanie Graf, in front of her Austrian home crowd at the European Indoor Championships in March 2002. Setting a new 800m world record of 1min 55.82sec in the same race. Breaking her national record for both 800m and 1500m outdoors in space of two weeks. Improving further when clocking 1:55.19 in July, the seventh-fastest all-time outdoor 800m. Dominated the 800m at the European Championships in Munich, recording a winning margin of 10 metres and leaving Britain's Kelly Homes in third place.

She says: (of her 800 metres rival Stephanie Graf) "Once the competitions began, the congeniality was no longer there, those little conversations we used to have before races. You know, you can't be real friends. When one's running well, then everything changes. With her anyway, not with me."

They say: "Jolanda Ceplak is a clean athlete. She deserved her medal [gold in the 800 metres at the European Championshps] and should be commended." Dave Moorcroft, the chief executive of UK Athletics.