Christine Ohuruogu: 'I won a gold and that's all that matters'

Two years ago, fresh from her first major triumph – at the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne – I spent an uplifting morning with the then littleknown Christine Ohuruogu.

At her suggestion, we met at in a greasy spoon cafÈ near her family home in East London, and she obligingly posed for photographs on the building site that will become the Olympic focal point in 2012.

With good exam grades and a degree in linguistics, Ohuruogu, who was born and raised with seven siblings within jogging distance of the new stadium, was clearly intelligent, driven and fiercely ambitious.

She was also engaging and attractive, and as the daughter of hard-working Nigerian immigrants who seemed to embody all that was best about multi-cultural Britain, I ventured to suggest then that she would make the perfect ‘face’ of the London Games.

In this performance- driven age, when merely taking part is no longer sufficient, there was just one caveat. The talented 400-metre runner would have to improve her speed sufficiently to become the hot favourite to win a gold medal on her home turf.

Yesterday was the day when this last lingering doubt was finally dispelled. Or at least it ought to have been.

With her eyes seemingly about to burst from their sockets and the veins standing out like a roadmap on her thickly-muscled neck, the girl from Stratford proved her credentials beyond doubt by annihilating her much-fancied American and Jamaican rivals.

It was Britain’s first track medal and she sank to her knees with her hands clasped, as if in prayer, before lying flat on her back and gazing up to the heavens.

Oh, how we wanted to share her joy. And yet, for all the rapturous praise heaped on her by BBC commentator Steve Cram as

she exploded across the winning line – ‘the strength told in the end; the strength of mind; the strength of character and the strength of her body’ – many will find it difficult to accept Christine Ohuruogu as a true Olympic champion.

For barely three months after I met her, a shadow was cast over her sporting honesty which not only tarnishes the gold she took yesterday, but leads many to question her suitability to carry the torch for Britain in four years.

Having somehow contrived to miss three consecutive drugs tests, she was summarily banned from the Olympics for life, as the rules of British athletics dictate.

And although she succeeded in having the ruling overturned, claiming that she simply ‘forgot’ to inform the testing authorities of her whereabouts, by no means everyone was convinced by her claims to serial amnesia.

Nor did she endear herself to a British public who so desperately want her to succeed Denise Lewis and Kelly Holmes as our new athletics golden girl by threatening to represent Nigeria (a country she has only ever visited once) if the lifetime ban were upheld. ‘The Olympics are the pinnacle of an athlete’s career. If the ban is not lifted, what do I do? Probably run for another country,’ she shrugged, when her professed absentmindedness cried out for an unequivocal apology.

DID she win fairly yesterday? On the face of it, the drugs testing in China appears to be so rigorous as to make cheating virtually impossible. And, of course, she won the race in 49.62 seconds, a time that is far from superhuman and slightly slower than her own personal best.

That said, however, the inevitability that this uncomfortable question will be raised is highly damaging, not only to Ohuruogu in her finest hour but to British athletics as a whole.

From my own observations, I can only say that the girl I met two years ago seemed the antithesis of a female Ben Johnson or Dwayne Chambers.

She also happened to turn up more than half an hour late, saying she had ‘completely forgotten’ about the interview.

No doubt her supporters would cite this as circumstantial evidence to support her claim to have missed the drugs tests not because she had something sinister to hide, but because her personal life is sometimes disorganised.

When she did finally arrive she was just as keen to talk about her voluntary role at an African community centre in Walthamstow and her work as the mentor to an underachieving 15-year-old schoolgirl as she was to boast about her athletics exploits.

She also remembered how she had been regarded as a ‘boffin’ at school, and when I asked her whether she had ever been tempted by recreational drugs, Ohuruogu replied sagely: ‘No, that is someone else’s story.’

She told me she hated the idea of polluting her body so much that she had never touched alcohol – though a trip to Pizza Hut after a hard day’s training was a permitted luxury.

Nor was she motivated by the wealth that comes with being a modern track queen in the form of lottery grants and sponsorship, she insisted (though her attitude might have modified somewhat now that she has swapped the cramped bedroom she shared with her younger sister, Victoria, also a budding star of the next Olympics, for a swish apartment).

When I asked her how she would feel if she was chosen as the Face of 2012, she replied earnestly that she would be honoured to be regarded as a role model, not just for young people from difficult backgrounds in East London but for ‘everyone’.

parents, Jonathan and Patience, emigrated from Nigeria to Britain in the early Eighties – ‘for a better life’, she told me, ‘though sometimes it’s not as easy as people make out.’

Her father worked hard and built up a successful computer business, while her mother is employed by the Inland Revenue. Their children were all raised in a God-fearing household and Christine strove prodigiously at school, gaining four A-levels and ten good GCSEs, including six A grades. Initially, she thought athletics was ‘boring’ and didn’t even start to compete seriously until she was 16. The sport she loved was netball. She began playing when she was nine and represented England at Under-17 and Under-19 level.

After winning a few races at school, however, she was persuaded to join her local athletics club, Newham and Essex Beagles, where her potential was quickly identified.

After school, she attended University College, London, graduating with a 2:1 degree despite a ferocious athletics training schedule.

She said she hoped that her story would prove an inspiration. ‘You see so many kids with talent that’s wasted.’

Last night, when the elation ebbed, Christine Ohuruogu might have paused to reflect that she came within an whisker of destroying her own huge talent, too.

Whether her sadly tarnished gold medal can be buffed up to a sheen in time for torch-bearing duties in London, four years hence, remains to be seen.