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It was one of the enduring sights of the 2008 Olympics: Katherine Grainger, who had just become the first British woman in any sport to have won medals at three successive Games, on the podium.

And it now promises to be one of the stories of London 2012 as Grainger has until the age of 36 in the hope of finally winning gold.

Think Steve Redgrave - after battles with diabetes and colitis - in Sydney having won his fifth Olympic title.

Think after his crew overcame losing a team-member to injury at the last minute to win a heart-stopping final and he gained his fourth gold.

Grainger's story may have been less celebrated so far because she has never taken the top step on the podium but it gains even more significance now as she tries once again to do so.

Born in Glasgow, raised in Aberdeen, a novice rower in Edinburgh and now living near the River Thames in Marlow, Grainger has been part of the Great Britain senior squad since 1997, and has long been the First Lady of British rowing.

She was in the quadruple scull in Sydney that gained Britain's first ever Olympic rowing medal. From there she set her sights on gold, moving into a pair with Cath Bishop for Athens, probably thinking that they were the two best athletes and that the pair was a slightly weaker event.

They were beaten by Romania, while the GB quad took a surprise silver. Had Grainger been in the quad perhaps they would have been two seconds faster and beaten Germany. It is a question she will never be able to answer.

It was different in the run-up to Beijing. The women's quad was put together early, winning three successive World Championships (although there was an early taste of the tears to come when , only for winners Russia to be because of a failed doping test).

Settled into a crew of Grainger, Frances Houghton, Debbie Flood and Annie Vernon, they suffered an early-season set-back when they were beaten by China in the but they were still confident.

In the Beijing final they went ahead early but the problem that hit first in 2006 - an inability to switch from cruising speed to withstand a late surge of speed from an opponent - struck again as China came through.

"I thought it would be the worst in the world and in some ways it was," she said on Friday.

"But having experienced the huge personal disappointment I can't imagine it would be worse than that. And we've all come out the other side.

"Whatever result comes you know you'll survive it and it's worth that risk. I'd rather go through it again than play safe and never try."

Although she says she had a pretty good idea in Beijing that she would return, Grainger took her time to come to a decision, taking a holiday in South Africa and Namibia and coming home having regained her perspective on life, realising she was more than just an Olympic rower.

She argues it is precisely that fact she could walk away, rather than the feeling she can't, which has convinced her to continue.

Even though she may protest otherwise, Grainger has a "life outside rowing". In January she hopes to being interviewing convicted murderers as part of her PhD paper, provisionally entitled The Social Construction of Homicide.

She could be training to be a lawyer, working in the media, giving motivational speeches, entertaining corporate clients but she has chosen to stick to the current day job and she is under no illusions about the task ahead.

"There's nothing quite like when the alarm goes off, it's pitch black, you can hear the rain against the window and there's ice on your windscreen and you know you're about to go out [on the water] for hours, being shouted at from the bank," she said.

"Day-in, day-out isn't the glamorous excitement that people see once every four years at the Olympics and that's what the decision has to be [based on].

"It's not: Can I in four years' time stand up in front of a home crowd, wear the British flag and do a race? Because, yes, I probably can.

"But can I do three-and-a-half years of gruelling training, feeling exhausted, feeling I don't have a social life, feeling that there's no guarantees, all the things that come with it?"

It will be of little importance to Grainger but the story of her challenge is, like those of Redgrave and Pinsent before her, better because she is able to tell it herself, expressing her emotions openly and articulating them clearly.

If you want an example, she gave to 成人论坛 Radio Scotland's Edi Stark three weeks ago, when she first admitted it was likely she would return.

Unlike many top sportspeople she is also able to accept - with a wry grin - that she might be a little different from the rest of us, "horrifically competitive", a lot more driven.

And there is the potential stumbling block. Neither Redgrave nor Pinsent looked like they enjoyed winning those final gold medals. Their celebrations were ones of relief.

Is there a danger that the next four years will lose the lustre of previous Olympiads?

"I know people who have won gold medals who found out it's not the satisfaction they thought it would be," she said on Friday.

"I don't think you need to enjoy [all of the training]. I don't think you can. I spoke to Steve Redgrave last week in the gym and he was saying he got so bored with training.

"You find elements to enjoy. I really enjoy being in a squad. I love that it's constantly a challenge and there's something satisfying about falling into bed at the end of the day when you could not have done any more and you've pushed yourself to new limits.

"That's why it's not about getting that one result in London; it's got to be about the years in between."

Those next three-and-a-half years will be absorbing but it will be Grainger's next Olympic experience that will really grab the attention.