Via JWF. Looks bad, but read the story carefully and you’ll see it’s thin. She claims they had a “close personal relationship,” that she taped their phone calls to prove it, and that he sent her a message just yesterday asking if she’d said anything about it — and yet the Post hasn’t seen or heard any of the hard evidence and she’s suddenly changing her story. Too good to check?

If it’s true, I’ll have to revise my timeline for when New York will have a Republican governor again. Two weeks ago, I thought it’d be 10 years. Now I’m thinking … next week, maybe?

An attractive Olympic gold-medalist says she had a close personal relationship with Gov. Paterson earlier this year – during which time she recorded a series of secret telephone conversations with him.

Track-and-field athlete Diane Dixon, of Brooklyn, also told The Post that she had received a private message yesterday morning from Paterson, asking if she was speaking with the media.

Dixon, 43, said Paterson, 53, was “mostly responsible” for getting her a badly needed job earlier this month with the city Department of Education in Crown Heights’ District 17…

Dixon, in a second anxious call to The Post yesterday, pleaded to “please just keep me out of this” and said she planned to destroy the tapes.

“I know one thing. I’m going to destroy them. I don’t want no part of this,” she continued.

Asked about her earlier claims of being close to Paterson, Dixon responded, “Don’t you go there. Don’t go there. He and I were just friends. It’s all a joke. Just a joke.”

Paterson’s spokesman says they met a few times and he helped her get a job but that’s the extent of it. She’s not on the city payroll either, although the Post thinks that’s simply because she hasn’t started the job yet. Is she simply nuts and making it up whole cloth? If not, then why’d she start talking to the Post about this (over the course of “recent weeks,” per the article) in the first place only to suddenly back off? If so, then, er, why was the lieutenant governor spending his time trying to find random people jobs? The spokesman says they met last year when he presented her with a medal (she’s a former Olympian) and then had three “meetings” in his office, partly vis-a-vis the job. Three meetings to say, “Talk to my assistant, he’ll put you in touch with some people”?

Exit question link: Public interest in an important political news story compels me to offer you the AP’s sneak peek at “Kristen” going, indeed, “wild.” Enjoy, if you like that sort of thing.