Big Interview With Kelly Holmes

Drivers are hooting their horns, passers-by are stopping to take photos on their mobile phones, random people are shouting: 'BBC Sports Personality of the Year - it's in the bag, Kelly!'

'Not if you don't vote for me. Make sure you vote for me,' Kelly Holmes shouts back. She is posing for photographs, the Thames flowing behind her, the London Eye in the distance. Her agent is desperate to drag her off to the next meeting, but she remains unflustered. She signs autographs gladly, poses for photographs with families, chatting away to all and sundry.

'I hope you win on Sunday,' says a man in a baseball cap. 'Well you'd better vote for me, then,' Holmes replies.

For the first time, Holmes has no control over whether or not she will win a competition and she appears terrified that everyone is so certain that she will win that they will not bother to vote. She says that she feels as if she is on the campaign trail. 'Maybe I should carry round a banner saying "Vote for Me",' she jokes.

The smile never fades, the temper never frays, she is as she is: honest, down-to-earth, endearingly straightforward and, most of all, deliriously happy. She has achieved everything in life that she set out to do and now she can relax and enjoy the after-show party.

'Ever since I was 14,' she says, speaking quickly and freely, unrestrained by worrying about the impression she wants to create, just a normal person telling her story, 'I wanted to be in the Army as a physical training instructor and I wanted to win a gold medal. Now I've done it, I'm a bit lost. Lost in a good way, but it's strange that, for the first time in my life, I no longer have those goals. All I know is that I want to run and smile when they say "double Olympic champion".'

We are having tea at the Savoy, where Holmes knows the doorman from filming her part in the video for London's bid for the 2012 Olympics. He has not seen the film, but she assures him that he is in shot.

She is sitting on one of the antique sofas in the corner of the famous tea room, her tiny frame lost among the cushions. It sounds terribly grand and yet it could not be less so. Holmes orders hot chocolate, which is served in a china teapot, and sandwiches. She dips chocolate biscuits into her teacup, looking wide-eyed at the Christmas decorations and the decorative ceiling. The waiters buzz around, unfailingly polite and trained not to gush, but evidently thrilled to have a history-maker in their midst.

Some people who have been thrust into the limelight reserved for sporting excellence have been known to change. A few have read rather too many articles about themselves and started to believe their trumpet-blowers. One or two may have let it start to change their personality. I am pleased to report, hand on heart, that this does not apply to Kelly Holmes.

'It's only people that let things go to their heads who change,' she says. 'I won't do that. What I've accomplished doesn't make me a better person than anyone else, it just means I've achieved my dreams. Sure, I get cars to go places and people dress me in nice clothes and those are great perks, but I'm no different to how I was before.'

The clothes thing has become a subject of debate. Kelly does not really 'do' clothes. She is a professional athlete who spends her life in tracksuit and trainers. She has a fine collection of shorts and Tshirts, but suits are thin on the ground. For the Savoy, she wears jeans, a fitted shirt and a short biker's jacket. She looks trendy but without the carefully devised disarray of a pop star and minus the spoilt-brat attitude of a model. She also looks about 24, 10 years younger than she is. The clothes have been a problem.

When she was asked to appear on Parkinson, the television show's producers wanted her to go on in a tracksuit. She resisted and when she found out that the other guests included Tom Cruise, she pointblank refused. She asked them if they would provide her with an outfit for the evening, which they did. They let her keep it and she thought that Christmas had come early.

'I was really nervous about Tom Cruise being on the show, but I bumped into him in the corridor and he gave me a big hug and told me that he'd watched me at the Olympics and I was, like, "Oh my God, Tom Cruise knows who I am. I don't believe this." '

After the show, Holmes was driven back to her home in Kent, a journey that takes about an hour-and-a-half.

The story continues. 'I'm crashed out on the sofa when the phone rings. My mum answered it and it was Tom Cruise. I hear her chatting away to him and he's asking me to go to his film premiere with him that night. It would have meant turning round in the next five minutes and heading back to London and I was exhausted. Also, I didn't have anything to wear except what I'd worn on Parky earlier that day and I didn't want him to see me in exactly the same thing, so I said no.'

So she turned down Tom Cruise - or rather her mum did on her behalf - because she did not have anything to wear. She does not regret it, she just laughs and reckons she needs more clothes. 'Well, it was a premiere, anyway, and he was busy signing autographs, so what would I have done?'

Holmes's life since winning the 800 metres and the 1500m in Athens has been an endless string of parties, awards ceremonies, lunches and charity appearances.

Unlike Matthew Pinsent, Pippa Funnell and Paula Radcliffe, she had not planned to write a post-Olympic autobiography. Those three emailed back the final chapters of a tome that was 90% finished before the Games began.

In contrast, Holmes with some help from ghostwriter Richard Lewis, has quickly turned a diary of the 10 days into a coffee-table book illustrated with photos. There is a literary lunch taking place at the Savoy while we are there and I suggest that we pop in to hawk the book. 'I don't think it's their sort of thing,' she says with a laugh, graciously admitting that this is not a work of literary genius.

In every photo she is either in her tracksuit or her running vest and shorts. It is not a behind-the-scenes exposé, nor is it the big life story - that is under negotiation and is planned for next year. It is, though, a simple and honest account of what it was like to do what no British athlete had done since Albert Hill in 1920 - win two middle-distance Olympic gold medals on the track.

'Obviously I knew what it meant to me,' Holmes says, taking herself back to August, 'but I didn't realise how much it meant to everyone back here. When you are at the Olympics, it's like being in a cocoon. You don't see or hear anything. I only saw one newspaper, which had me on the front page, which surprised me.

'Little did I know that my mum had a whole stack of papers with me on the front page. I couldn't believe it. The strangest thing for me now is the realisation that everyone knows my name.

'A few days after I got back, there was the parade through my home town from Hildenborough to Tonbridge. I said to my mum that it would be really embarrassing for the town if no one turned up. I was a bit worried about it, but there were 80,000 people. I will never forget that day. Outside the old people's home they were there waving, there were kids with banners, people with cameras. It took an hour longer than the council had planned because there were so many people. It was incredible.'

It is clear that Kelly Holmes is a home-town girl. The big Olympic parade in London, of which she was the star, did not have the same impact because it was not the people she grew up with, the ones who have known the struggles she has had with injury and the commitment she has put into her training. In Tonbridge, she shared the bus with her mother, her friends and all of the people who have helped to get her through the past few years.

After the home-town parade, Holmes popped in to the old people's home and took with her some of the flowers she had been given. One of the women was celebrating her hundredth birthday.

'I went up to see her,' says Holmes, 'and took her a bunch of flowers. There was a telegram from the Queen on the table and she was having the best day ever. She had watched the parade but couldn't believe that I was there, in her bedroom. She was beside herself.' I do not like to mention that overexcitement for a woman of 100 is not advisable, but Holmes is smiling so much that I guess the old bird did not keel over there and then.

Apart from meeting Tom Cruise, Holmes has also rubbed shoulders with Robbie Williams, Ant and Dec, the England rugby union team and Shane Richie, whom she met on the set of EastEnders when recording the soap's Christmas special. She was asked to go to the jungle for I'm A Celebrity, but turned it down, saying that she would rather do something more physically challenging, such as Superstars. Tonight, though, is the big night as far as she is concerned.

'I've always said that BBC Sports Personality of the Year is the biggest honour of the lot. I've been to the show loads of times, but I've never been up for anything. It would put the icing on the cake if I won, but it's up to the public.'

I show Holmes the list of former winners, which includes Stirling Moss, Bobby Moore, Mary Peters, Sebastian Coe, Ian Botham, Nick Faldo, Nigel Mansell, Lennox Lewis and, in recent years, Steve Redgrave, David Beckham and Jonny Wilkinson. It is a list of high achievers, but the name of Coe is the one that stands out for her.

'Seb Coe has always been a hero of mine. I remember watching him and I admired his determination. I loved the fact that you could always see on his face how much he wanted it. That's why it was so weird for me that, after the 800m, he was kneeling in front of me taking off my spikes. My hero taking off my spikes - it was surreal.'

Coe was part of the presentation party for the women's 800m and, because of a delay to the ceremony, he suggested to Holmes that she should pass the time by doing her cool-down because she had the 1500m heats the next day. The shock of winning a gold medal in an event in which she had decided to take part only three days earlier had left her incapable of sensible thought. Remember the look on her face as she crossed the line? It had all left her in a spin and Holmes does not do fake emotion.

Nor does she do drugs, despite the many times she could have benefited from a quick remedy for one of the many injuries. Given the state of her sport and the accusations surrounding top American sprinters Marion Jones and Tim Montgomery, was she worried that her flourish so late in her career might be subject to suspicion?

'I think if somebody suddenly emerges from the woodwork,' she says, looking surprised that anyone might question her integrity, 'we all wonder. I'm like anyone else - if an unknown suddenly puts up an amazing time then I think, "Where did you come from?" When you look at an athlete's history and what they've done in the past, it all follows from that.'

So if anyone was questioning Holmes's sudden improvement, what would she say? 'I would tell them the truth: that I was injury-free.

'In the 12 years that I've been racing, I have been injured in seven. I always knew that if I had the chance to have one whole year, I'd be able to achieve my goals. I've got a weak back and that transmits to lower-limb injuries, but I've only learnt that in the last year-and-a-half. I know my body better now and I can read the signals.'

It is a shame that this selfknowledge has come so late in her sporting life, but at least she got that chance to get it right. That it was in an Olympic year is down to luck. There is always the chance that, however hard you train, however fit you are, one of your opponents will have benefited from the latest super-drug.

'I'm very cautious with everything,' she says, dipping another biscuit into her hot chocolate, vigilance thrown to the wind in the off-season, 'almost to the point of paranoia. But you can't let [the suspicion of other athletes] get to you because you have to race whatever. Bloodtesting at the Olympics gave me real peace of mind.'

Because all the competitors would have to be clean? 'At those championships, yes,' she replies, her awareness of the murky underworld of athletics all too evident. She may be innocent, but she is not naive.

Holmes is refresheningly normal and unspoilt. Her agent's assistant, Andy Graffin, used to be an athlete and has known Kelly for a decade.

He says that she has not changed a bit and must be the lowestmaintenance client anyone could wish for. 'An evening with her mates and a pizza means more to her than all the glam stuff,' he tells me as Kelly adopts as aggressive a face as she can muster (the photographer has asked her for 'attitude').

Another passerby requests an autograph. She signs her name and draws a little runner underneath the 'y' of Kelly. It is her personal touch. This is what I am, a runner. Not a star, not a celebrity, a runner. 'You'll win it, no problem,' he says. 'Only if you vote for me!' she replies.

'Kelly Holmes: My Olympic Ten Days' published by Virgin Books, £9.99