Britons survive a year of living famously

Exactly 12 months ago the British team exceeded all expectations at the Olympic Games in Sydney by securing their best medal haul for 80 years, including 11 golds. Mike Rowbottom looks back at how the champions have coped with the demands and pressures that followed their triumphs

Denise Lewis: Heptathlon

It has been a year of triumph and trauma for the golden girl of British athletics. Her campaign to go one better than the world silver medal she won in 1999 always looked troubled, and her performance at the world trials in Birmingham confirmed that her high jump technique, at least, was almost non-existent.

Her decision to pull out of the heptathlon the day before competition began in Canada because of a stomach complaint excited widespread cynicism. Even the British chief coach, Max Jones, alluded to the fact that she had lost valuable training time due to "Olympic festivities". Lewis, whose book Personal Best comes out this month, has denied over-indulging herself with celebrity appearances. But the fact was evident that in Edmonton she – literally – lacked stomach for a fight. She is now focussing on next year, when she will seek a third Commonwealth title en route to the 2004 Olympics.

"A second gold feels very close," she says. "There would be something very special about being a double Olympic champion."

Men's Coxless Four – Rowing

Since the glorious victory in Sydney, Britain's famous four have split into Famous One – with Steven Redgrave, five-times Olympic champion, retiring from competition and concentrating on charity fund-raising – Famous Two – with Matthew Pinsent and James Cracknell establishing world dominance in the coxless pairs – and Unhappy One, with Tim Foster struggling to find a role within the British set-up after being assailed with back and knee injuries.

Redgrave, now Sir Steven, took part in the Flora London Marathon as part of his effort to raise £5m for children's charities. Sir Steven is also backing a new series of Super Sprint races as well as fulfilling his role as a steward at Henley more single-mindedly than of late.

Pinsent and Cracknell won the pairs at this year's World Championships, doubling up to take the coxed pairs in a victory which brought Pinsent level on nine world golds with his old partner Redgrave.

Foster, who decided to continue rowing only after careful medical scrutiny of his back, from which he has had two discs removed, was immediately checked by a knee injury and made an unsuccessful attempt to tick over in the single sculls. Now coaching the University of London squad, a place in the British eight looks favourite.

Men's Eight – Rowing

The progress of Britain's unexpected winners in Sydney has been disrupted by a period of turmoil. Three of the eight retired from competition almost immediately – Ben Hunt-Davis, who joined a motivational team-building company, Andrew Lindsay, who joined Goldman Sachs, and Fred Scarlett, who joined a sports management company.

Of the remaining quintet, Kieran West, who was in the victorious Cambridge Boat Race crew, missed the world championships because of injury. Only five of the Sydney winners, therefore, were present at the worlds – cox Rowley Douglas, Simon Dennis, Luka Grubor, Louis Attrill and Steve Trapmore. Fifth place, however understandable, was still regarded with disappointment.

Major re-structuring will occur this year following Dennis's decision to take a year off competition in order to work in a Kenyan safari park, and Attrill's intention to take a year off for his legal studies.

Jonathan Edwards: Triple Jump

Having failed to win the Olympic title when everyone expected him to in 1996, success four years on, at the age of 35, lifted a huge weight of expectation from the shoulders of the slight figure whose prodigious talents have set new standards within his event.

Although he only managed a silver in this year's World Indoor Championships, which he described only half-humourously as just one thing on a list of other concerns, he arrived for the World Championships determined to regain the title he had taken in setting the world record six years earlier.

Relaxed and fit, he proved himself the supreme triple jumper by some distance, and took a little extra time out at the end of August to earn an extra crock of gold for the family store by winning at the Goodwill Games in Brisbane.

As he now says, he may go on to another Olympics, or he may retire next week. It is likely, however, that he will seek the only title that has eluded him at the Commonwealth Games in Manchester next year.

Audley Harrison: Boxing: Super-Heavyweight

An appearance on They Think It's All Over this week confirmed two important things about Audley Harrison. He can take a joke against himself, and he has done something about the unruly mop of hair he sported in his underwhelming victory over the 32-year-old Kettering-based Scot Derek McCafferty – yes, him – the weekend before last.

Harrison may be a good sport, and a good sort, but his two professional outings within an overhyped BBC TV package which is bringing him £1m for 10 fights have done nothing to convince anyone except perhaps himself that, at 29, he can realise his stated ambition of becoming world heavyweight champion. "Audley has plenty of time to work on a television career," an anxious BBC executive commented last week. "He needs to get working on his boxing." Harrison's own assessment – "I see myself treading a steeper learning curve" – appears to be something of an understatement right now.

Stephanie Cook: Modern Pentathlon

It was always the intention of Dr Stephanie Cook to return to medicine full-time once she had sated her competitive instincts. To Olympic gold, she added a home World Cup victory in Bath, and golds in the European Championships and, on the home ground of Millfield, the World Championships.

The day after the latter triumph she set off with an emergency medical relief team to spend 10 days assisting in the aftermath of the Gujarat earthquake. The day after she returned, Cook took up a post of senior house officer in the accident and emergency ward of a major Bath hospital. At 29 – only 29! – does she contemplate ever returning to competitive action?

"I never say never," she says, but the International Olympic Committee's decision not to include the team event in the 2004 Games makes it likely that Cook has striven her last in that particular arena.

Richard Faulds: Shooting: Double Trap

A year on from his last-gasp triumph on the range, this 24-year-old from Longparish in Hampshire has age on his side – "With luck, I've got two or three more Olympics ahead of me" – but not, unhappily for him, every member of his local community. The range which Dad built – on the family farm – remains out of bounds after objections from a neighbour over noise levels. Until the wrangle is sorted out, Faulds is practising at Bisley.

He was disappointed only to finish ninth at the World Championships in Cairo in April, but has since recovered his form by winning in the pairs and individual events at August's Commonwealth championships.

"The year has gone very quickly," he says. "I don't think it ever really sinks in what I've done, but I've had great fun."

His appearance as a mystery guest on They Think It's All Over, ending with Jonathon Ross exposing his assets after taking a rubber clay pigeon below the belt, made the front page of The Sun. But it proved not to be too traumatic for Faulds as he missed the naked truth. "I'd made my exit by then, so I didn't actually get to see it. Which was quite handy."

Jason Queally: Cycling: 1km time trial

Starting today, and for the next five days, Queally will be sitting within a £100,000 construction entitled the Blueyonder Challenger in the Nevada Desert, competing with four others in the World Human Powered Speed Challenge. His target is the world speed record of 72.24mph held by Sam Whittingham of Canada.

Queally has pursued his new goal in tandem with track cycling. Just a month after his Sydney triumph he won a bronze in the 1km at the World Championships on his home track in Manchester, and last week he added a bronze in the Olympic Sprint at the World Championships in Antwerp.

But the forthcoming challenge on the five-mile course along Highway 305, in a pod-like contraption without handlebars, has been the overriding consideration for him over the last 12 months. "It is just completely different, physically and mentally," he says. "I really believe the record can be broken and I'm pleased they have chosen me as the most powerful athlete to do it."

Shirley Robertson: Sailing: Europe Class

Over the last 12 months, this 33-year-old Scotswoman's life has been changed – by Jamie and Freddie.

The former is Jamie Boag, a stockbroker and accomplished amateur sailor whom Robertson married three months ago in a ceremony on the Isle of Wight for which she arrived with her father in a classic wooden speedboat. The occasion was covered by Hello! magazine.

The latter is the name of the 32-year-old Danish yacht in which Robertson, who will be accompanied by two other women, intends to contest the Yngling class which is being introduced to the women's competitive programme at the 2004 Olympics.

Robertson demonstrated that she can be as effective a team player as individual competitor in August when she was among the crew of the 79ft maxi Nicorette which completed the Fastnet Race in what was her first experience of offshore ocean racing in almost two decades.

But it was at Cowes Week this year that Robertson fully realised the impact of her Olympic victory. "I overheard another team discussing their strategy," she said. "It was 'Follow Shirley Robertson'." A hard act indeed.

Ben Ainslie: Sailing: Laser Class

A year on from exacting full revenge for the Olympic defeat of 1996, when he was duped into false starting the last race by the man who claimed the title, Robert Scheidt of Brazil, one of Britain's outstanding competitors in any sport has a different, and larger goal in mind.

The 24-year-old from Falmouth is in New Zealand as a member of the One World America's Cup syndicate aiming to wrest the Louis Vuitton Trophy from the hosts two years from now. Ainslie was head-hunted by the Seattle-based organisation before the British America's Cup challenge had got off and sailing. He now compares the switch to going from racing go-karts to Formula One.

"Most of the guys in the team have won an America's Cup or other big ocean races," he says. "The fact that I had won Olympic gold in a 12ft dinghy did not mean diddly squat to them."

Iain Percy: Sailing: Finn Class

Percy has spent much of the last 12 months switching from the single-handed business of Finn sailing to crewing larger boats, and recently took part as a tactician in the Farr40's world championships.

Although a lucrative job in the City has long beckoned this 25-year-old economics graduate, it is a lure which he has continued to resist. "The overall experience since the Olympics has been too good to give up," he says. Accordingly, he is planning a new Olympic campaign in the two-man Star class at Athens three years from now.

His immediate task, however, is to set about raising the £100,000 annual sponsorship needed to support a campaign which will entail regular competition against the leading crews based in America.