“I executed that race and probably shocked myself”

IN THE FIRST OF A NEW SERIES, THE 1992 OLYMPIC 400m HURDLES CHAMPION TELLS ATHLETICS WEEKLY ABOUT THE IMPORTANCE OF THE GAMES AND HER EXPERIENCES

THE OLYMPICS is the ultimate. I know we have still got the World Championships and things like that but the Olympics is the thing you dreamt about. I did, like so many others. I remember first watching the Olympics and seeing Daley Thompson, Seb Coe, and Steve Ovett and just thinking ‘that is what I want to do in life’. To then being taken on by a coach that had trained people to be an Olympic champion, as in Daley. All of a sudden it was like ‘wow’.

That is what I got out of bed for every morning. It was the reason why. To go to my first Olympics and to just experience it, I was absolutely completely blown away by the magnitude of it and just how big it was. I was sort of surprised that I still came away with fifth in that final (Seoul in 1988), because the whole thing blew me away. It gave me an amazing experience to know what to expect next time. During the next four years, every waking moment was ‘how we get there?’, ‘what does it take?’, ‘how do we train?’, ‘what do we learn on the way?’ Putting every little aspect in place.