For more than a decade Rebecca Romero has dedicated her life to achieving glory in not just one, but two sports. In the pursuit of her Olympic medals in first rowing, then cycling, she has sacrificed her free time, her peace of mind, any semblance of a normal life and at least one relationship. This gruelling regime also explains why, despite her successes — she is only the second woman in history to win an Olympic medal in two different sports — Romero is still driving around in a battered eight-year-old Volvo.

“It’s a proper athlete’s car — oil marks all over the boot, empty drinks bottles in the footwells,” she says. “I can just throw the bikes in the back and not worry.

“As soon as I stop racing, I’d love to get a Porsche Speedster 356 or an MG Midget — I love quirky-looking classic cars — but right now the only thing my car needs to be is functional.”

No one could doubt Romero’s commitment to her sports. When she crossed the line in Beijing last year to claim Olympic gold in the individual pursuit, she vented an almost primeval roar, as if the effort had taken her very last gasp. It was the culmination of two years of unrelenting hard slog.

Four years earlier in Athens, she and her team-mates in the quadruple scull had been forced to settle for a silver medal. A last-minute change of tactics was blamed, Romero bitterly

regretted it, and despite then going on to claim gold in the world championships the following year, she had fallen out of love with rowing. She only took up cycling in 2006, never imagining that her two-wheeled exploits would soon exceed her achievements on the water.

But then Romero never does things by halves. Now 29, her latest obsession is playing Guitar Hero on the Nintendo Wii. When she first tried it she was, she admits, terrible — but not for long. “I didn’t like being useless, so I had to play, play, play, stay up all night, keep doing it, especially when my younger sister was a million times better than me. I played so much I got an elbow injury.”

Romero confesses all this through laughter and with a healthy dose of self-awareness. In a string of interviews following her Olympic victory, she was portrayed as remarkably, almost troublingly, intense. Dan Hunt, her cycle coach, described her as “the most driven athlete I have ever met”. Everyone wanted to get to the bottom of what exactly was eating away at this attractive young woman; the inner demons that compelled her to pursue sporting excellence not once, but twice. Interviewers considered the fact that her British mother and Spanish father had divorced when she was six. They wanted to explore her deepest thoughts, as if she were a mystery to be solved. Romero didn’t like it one little bit. “I’m generally quite a private person,” she says.

“I don’t really like to be recognised too much. And I think maybe I’m too honest. I hear other sports people talk after an event and they say things like ‘I did my best’, ‘I’m pleased with my performance’. Maybe I should try to be more like that.”

After the Olympics, she admits to feeling “really down for about six months”. “It happened almost the moment I left the velodrome,” she says. “It’s like you’ve been working for the past four years, maybe even 11 years, since I started rowing, just aiming for this Olympic gold medal. Then you achieve that goal, and it’s as if your mind and body switch off.”

It is something her cycling colleague Victoria Pendleton has also spoken about, and raises even more questions about what makes them carry on. “It did make me think about 2012,” admits Romero. “There will be the added intensity because it’s in London and so many people will be watching, but I figure we have enough Olympic champions now to share the limelight.”

For a while, Romero thought about switching to yet another sport, which, if she succeeded, could have made her the only woman ever to win an Olympic medal in three disciplines. For the good of Britain’s medal prospects, she eventually decided against it. Instead, last week she started training in France for the London Games, where she hopes to claim another gold medal for track cycling. If that weren’t enough, she sets off tomorrow to try to set a very different world record: the fastest cycle from Land’s End to John o’ Groats by tandem.

She will be accompanied by James Cracknell, double Olympic gold rower turned serial adventurer, and together they will attempt to complete the 874-mile journey in about 50 hours (the current record stands at 51hr 19min and 23sec), without sleep. “It’s very different to riding a normal bike,” says Romero. “It’s like the difference between driving a nippy car and a great big lorry. It’s great downhill because of the weight, but not so good uphill. The nightmare combination is if it rains, so the road is slippy, it’s dark, so we can’t see, and we’re struggling to stay awake. It adds an element of danger.” She lets out a nervous laugh.

“We’ll be eating carbohydrate gels with caffeine in them, but if it gets really bad, we might take a power nap. I have stayed up for three days and two nights before, though, during my finals [for the degree in sports science and English she managed to squeeze in between competing].”

With comments like that, it’s hard not to go along with the notion of Romero as this insanely driven individual, but she vehemently denies it. Asked to describe herself, her first thought is “laid-back”, followed by “competitive, that’s for sure”. She then ponders for a moment. “My boyfriend would say I’m lazy,” she laughs. “I’m kind of like an on or off person; an all-or-nothing person.”

Before the big push for 2012 begins in earnest, Romero is enjoying taking life at a slightly less hectic pace, spending more time at home in Henley, hanging out with family, friends and her IT consultant boyfriend, and exploring new hobbies. “I’ve been trying salsa dancing,” she says, with a giggle. “I’m absolutely terrible at it. I quite like to go and just be useless at something. You definitely won’t see me competing on Strictly Come Dancing.”

Well, that’s what she says now ...

Romero will make her record attempt to mark the launch of the Deloitte Ride Across Britain, which takes place next June. See www.rideacrossbritain.com

My stuff

On my MP3 player Power ballads from the 1980s for training

On my DVD player I can never remember what films I’ve seen. I’m forever renting DVDs then realising I’ve seen them before

My favourite gadget Nintendo Wii — especially Guitar Hero

The road to success

Ford Escort Romero’s first car after passing her driving test at the third attempt

Vespa Scooter She paid £3,000 for a 1965 classic, which was stolen and set alight

Porsche Speedster 356 This classic model is the car she wants to buy when she stops racing

Volvo V40 She keeps this eight-year-old estate for lugging her bikes around

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