HER laughter rings out across the busy, open-air restaurant. “I suppose you could call him a friend,” she said, almost shyly. “I ring him from time to time and he rings me after big competitions but I never forget that he’s the President. I always show him respect.”

Maria Mutola, the Olympic 800 metres champion, stretches her arms above her head slowly, languidly, like a cat basking on a warm afternoon. Then, suddenly, she snaps them back down by her side and looks over at her manager with a look of alarm spreading across her face. “Oh no, I can’t believe I just said that,” she squealed. “I can’t believe that I’m here, you know, talking about the President of Mozambique like that.

It’s still hard to believe. Still really hard to believe what’s happened.”

I bet it is. The story of Mutola’s rise from poverty in Mozambique to gold in Sydney and a wealthy lifestyle in South Africa and the United States is one of the most dramatic in modern sport.

Mutola’s story begins on the dirt-covered streets of Macelala in Mozambique 14 years ago. She was 15 at the time and was playing football as the only girl in an all-boys team in a local competition.

“We won,” she said. “I was so thrilled. We were all very happy. No one even thought it was a problem that I was a girl and it was a boys’ football competition. I was good enough to play — so what? But a few days later we heard that the team we beat in the final made a formal complaint to Fifa because there was a girl in the team. They thought we should be penalised.”

The ensuing battle between the local teams was covered by a local newspaper (the appeal was eventually rejected and Mutola’s team was allowed to keep the trophy). José Craveirinha, who has been described as the country’s Poet Laureate for the words he wrote during the 17-year civil war, read about the famous footballing girl in his paper and decided he wanted to meet her. He travelled to Mutola’s club the next day and found her kicking a football around in the street outside. He took one look at her running for the ball and realised that here was someone with prodigious talent.

“He ran up to me and talked of athletics. I didn’t know what it was. I had never heard of track and field. I had no idea what he was talking about. I liked football — that’s all,” Mutola said. “Then he bought me shoes and took me training, kept trying to convince me to work harder. It was such hard work, I couldn’t believe it. The next day my whole body was sore so I quit. I thought I would never see José again.” But Craveirinha, an enthusiast and patron of athletics, had seen enough of Mutola in training to know that she could be one of the best athletes in the world. He found out where she lived and went to visit her parents to explain that their daughter was extremely gifted.

“My father was working on the railroad and mother grew vegetables to sell at the market,” she said. “They had no money and he convinced them that I could make them a lot of money and end their poverty days. My father told him he could have me to train: I was handed over. Next, José had to convince me to train with him.”

Craveirinha took Mutola to his home and showed her tapes of the 1984 Olympics and told her how good he thought she could be. “I saw Carl Lewis and the packed stadiums,” she said. “I was amazed. I decided to have a go.”

Mutola started training and just a few months later, with only a handful of training sessions to her name, she represented Mozambique at the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, finishing seventh in her heat more than a month before her 16th birthday.

When she came back, her poet suggested that he apply for an Olympic Solidarity Scholarship, awarded by the International Olympic Committee to athletes from developing nations to enable them to train full-time in America.

“In 1988, soon after the Games, I was offered the programme and the chance to train in America, but I was terrified,” Mutola said. “I knew José had worked so hard to get me out of Mozambique, where there were no synthetic tracks at all, to America, where there were great facilities and lots of coaches. But, for the month I had spent in the Olympics, I had missed my family so much. I didn’t want to go away again.”

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