Sally Pearson

I have a huge passion for animals and while retirement is a long way off, when I do I would love to do something with animals.

If you hold back in hurdles, you are going to fall over.

But I'm after medals more than anything. Championships don't get taken away from you but records do, so I think I'd rather have medals at every championships rather than times. A world record would be a bonus, but I'm still only 25 in 17 days.

Some people are used to having things done for them by her parents, I am not. I can do it myself.

I know who my dad is, I've met him a few times, but I don't even call him dad. I know it sounds horrible, but I don't even see him as part of my family, to be honest. If you want the truth, it doesn't bother me because I don't know any different. I just know that me and my mum, that was my family.

Hurdling, sprinting, athletics in general, is always in the back of your mind.

Being at school, being who I am, being an athlete, it was hard to find people like me. There's not many athletes that can be at my level. That was kind of hard finding people who love something so much they want to keep on doing it.

My goals were last year to win the world champs and this year to win the Olympic Games and I've done that and I couldn't be happier.

I never let anything stop me from doing what I want to do.

Winning a gold medal is not easy but I believed in myself, especially over the last four years.

Coming over to Europe you can always put on weight really easily because you are not doing your normal routine at home. It is just a bit more discipline and not eating breads and pastas which are my favourite foods in the entire world.

When it becomes hard for me not to eat bad food, I try to think about what I have to do and what is ahead of me and what I want to achieve.

My job is my sport so I have to make sure that I stay focussed on it. I train almost every day so it takes up a lot of my life and you don't want to bring any new distractions into your life.

Not a lot of people know me outside of athletics and believe it or not I am actually quite shy. The exhilaration of a win or tears after falling are the extremes. It takes me a while to get to know someone, but once I do I am very loyal to my old friends.

It's always, 'Are you the runner girl?' I say, 'My name is Sally actually.' I used to always get that at school as well, 'Are you the runner girl?' I'm not even the runner girl, I'm a hurdler.