Interview Tanni Grey-Thompson

The litmus test for fame that Sue Lawley applies on Desert Island Discs involves the supermarket: when, she asks, was the first occasion her guest was recognised while out grocery shopping? For Tanni Grey-Thompson, the Lawley moment came quite soon after she returned from the Sydney Paralympics clutching more medals than can be found on a Ruritanian general's chest.

"I was in the supermarket," she recalls, "I'd just come from training, so I was looking a little dishevelled, and this woman came up and asked me if I was me. So we chatted and, as I moved away, she must have thought I was deaf or something because she turned to her husband and said in a really loud voice: 'God, she looks rough in real life.'"

As it happens, for this interview Grey-Thompson looks anything but, her elfin features glowing in the final stages of a pregnancy which is expected to reach fruition in the next fortnight. Still, the pleasure with which she delivers that anecdote is instructive. In part she just enjoys a good laugh, generally at her own expense. But there also lurks in her smile an element of astonishment at how a wheelchair athlete can have achieved such a level of prominence.

In her career she has seen her sport change from the sort of patronising nod given to plucky folk overcoming adversity that marked the coverage of her first Paralympics in Seoul in 1988 to the point where her event has been so integrated into the mainstream it has been granted full medal status in this summer's Commonwealth Games. And largely the change has been brought about by the efforts of one woman: Grey-Thompson, the Welsh wheelchair racer whose accumulation of medals propelled her sport into the public consciousness. Or is it unfair to describe her merely as a medal machine?

"No, I think the only way to be judged has to be on medals," she says. "For a long time we [wheelchair athletes] drifted away from that; people were saying, well I did my personal best, so that's fine. But with lottery funding and much more attention it's not enough. What the country, what the media wants to see is medals. If you're going to do it you don't mess about with it. I'm trying to think of a better word here than half-arsed. But I can't."

Which is a typical Grey-Thompson point of view. Although she is thrilled that her sport has achieved supermarket status, she does not want to be known as a pioneer, a campaigner for a cause: she regards herself as an athlete pure and simple. Even after the embarrassment of the BBC Sports Personality of the Year Award ceremony in 2000, when she was marooned in the audience because the organisers failed to supply a ramp to enable her to go on stage to receive a gong, she did not make political capital.

"Hey, it happens," she says. "I kind of felt sorry because the BBC are better than that. The coverage they've given to the Paralympics deserves better. I think it was just an oversight. Part of what was interesting for me about that incident was the number of complaints. The BBC had over 100 phone calls while it was happening and it was the biggest response they've ever had on Points of View."

The irony of Grey-Thompson is that by taking herself seriously as an athlete, by concentrating exclusively on her sport, she has done far more to normalise attitudes to wheelchair users than any number of activists chaining themselves to the gates of Downing Street. And, boy, does she take her athletics seriously. When it comes to her craft, few can match her dedication, focus or fearsome competitiveness. For instance, when asked whether she and her fellow athletes regard themselves as ambassadors for the disabled, she quickly dispels the notion that the wheelchair racers are a cosy sisterhood united in a proselytising zeal.

"It's the same as the outside world: there's people you speak to and people you have no wish to speak to," she says. "You get on with the people you get on with and that's it really. I mean, I hope I intimidate the others on the track. I'm the only one who does a warm-up lap. I heard the other at not enough. What the country, what the media wants to see is medals. If you're going to do it you don't mess about with it. I'm trying to think of a better word here than half-arsed. But I can't."

Which is a typical Grey-Thompson point of view. Although she is thrilled that her sport has achieved supermarket status, she does not want to be known as a pioneer, a campaigner for a cause: she regards herself as an athlete pure and simple. Even after the embarrassment of the BBC Sports Personality of the Year Award ceremony in 2000, when she was marooned in the audience because the organisers failed to supply a ramp to enable her to go on stage to receive a gong, she did not make political capital.

"Hey, it happens," she says. "I kind of felt sorry because the BBC are better than that. The coverage they've given to the Paralympics deserves better. I think it was just an oversight. Part of what was interesting for me about that incident was the number of complaints. The BBC had over 100 phone calls while it was happening and it was the biggest response they've ever had on Points of View."

not great but it's enough to get you through the first and second rounds, then kind of wing-and-a-prayer it in the final."

She has been in light training throughout her pregnancy which, because she is confined to a wheelchair, has been monitored with the medical attention normally associated with royal births.

"I get scanned every two to three weeks. The doctors all say, the fitter you can stay the better it is, so they've all encouraged me to carry on training. The biggest problem is not getting too warm because it kind of boils the baby."

Despite getting on the treadmill in her garage at home in the north-east as often as possible, the athlete has found her new condition comes with unexpected complications.

"It is very strange, having the lump," she says, cradling her stomach protectively. "I find things like going up a step difficult because I can't lean forward in my chair."

She also says she is much slower as a result of wheeling for two. Which is an alarming thought because, when we meet, she spins round the corridors of her hotel at a velocity which threatens serious damage to the shins of anyone passing. If that is slow, she must cut swaths at top speed, a trip down Oxford Street resulting in whole ranks of shoppers diving for cover.

"Oh God, I'm much, much slower at the ordinary things in life," she says. "I don't think it helps having been so fit and losing a lot of that fitness. We went to Tate Modern at the weekend and I must have had three or four people offering to help push me up the ramp. It was very embarrassing: champion wheelchair athlete can't push herself up ramp."

Then there are emotional repercussions.

"I had about a month of just crying," she adds. "I'd just burst into tears. Starsky and Hutch: I was watching that and went into floods. Where did that come from? You're sitting there thinking this is not rational. Thank goodness that didn't last long."

Not to mention the effect on her memory.

"What did you ask me?" she says at one point, just after the conversational flow is interrupted by a phone call. "I've forgotten. The baby's sucking my brains out."

Which is one of the many reasons, she says, that she cannot wait to get back to normal life as soon as possible, putting in the 80 to 100 miles a week training.

"I'm not saying I've had a tough pregnancy because, give or take a bit of morning sickness, I haven't," she says. "The only recurring crisis is to do with my child's sport if it's a boy. Because they're experts in births to mothers with spina bifida, he's going to be born in Cardiff. But, as we live in England, he'd qualify for England on residency. So what happens if he has the choice to play rugby for England or Wales and chooses England? I'd be heartbroken. Still, I've got a few years to worry about that, haven't I?"

Indeed, a few more years of training, training and more training, plus the odd chance to interact with the public.

"I was doing a book signing the other day," she says, "and this woman comes up to me and says: 'What are you doing?' And I said: 'Well, I'm signing copies of my book.' And she looked at the photo on the cover and she said, 'That's never you,' and I said 'It is,' and she said, 'It's not.' So I tried to make a joke of it and said: 'Well, I did spend an hour and a half with a make-up artist before the picture was taken.' And she looked at the book, looked at me and said: 'You should do that more often.'"

And with that Wales's most decorated athlete of all time shakes her head, spins round in her wheelchair and smiles broad and long.