Victoria Pendleton has just dug her three cycling Track World Championships medals out of a kitbag, is lying on the track in a Lycra one-piece and asking “does this look OK?” Yes, our girl is a marketing man’s dream.

And that is before we get to the question-and-answer session in which asked why we, the British, excel at the middle-class sports of rowing, sailing and cycling, she responds: “Because we’re good at sitting on our arses?” So that is brains, looks and talent in one svelte package.

The media ripple caused by her two golds and one silver at the World Championships in Manchester last weekend will become an unstoppable wave if she wins Olympic gold in Beijing in August. The Sally Gunnell, Denise Lewis and Kelly Holmes mainstream beckons, followed by the inevitable approach from Strictly Come Dancing.

There will be offers, too, to repeat her recent photo shoot in which she posed wearing nothing except her bike. It was a session that raised the issue of whether a serious athlete had resorted to trading on sex appeal. One respected columnist bemoaned her taking her clothes off, to which she responds by asking whether the same was said of Lance Armstrong, the seven-times Tour de France champion, on whom the picture was modelled.

“I wouldn’t have done it if I thought it was provocative or seedy or anything like that,” Pendleton, 27, says. “I thought it was artistic. I was flattered that they wanted me to replicate a picture Lance Armstrong did. There was another picture I did posing in a dress with my bike and another journalist said it looked ridiculous. I was quite offended, to be honest. I enjoyed it and I looked good. You tell me which girl my age wouldn’t want to be on the cover of a magazine? If I was tenth in the world and just trying to sell myself physically, I would feel ashamed. But I am doing well and feel I have deserved it. I wouldn’t agree to do it unless I was winning.”

By way of defence, she also points to the photographs of Lewis, who once posed in nothing more than red, white and blue bodypaint. “Maybe some people found it sexual, but I just thought it was artistic, an amazing physical specimen,” Pendleton says. “As an athlete, I know the work that has gone into getting a body as honed, as athletic as that. It is a work of art.

“There is this nasty stereotype of what you should be like in cycling and I have stepped beyond that. I am a different build and I have shown it works. It is, like, ‘Check this out.’ Other girls my size should be going for it.”

If she is proud of her body, it is because she spent years wondering if it would be her downfall. Most coaches used to look at her and wonder how someone who even now is 5ft 5in and less than 9½stone (although capable of squatting twice that in the gym), could possibly take on the big girls of track sprinting. “When I started I was very intimidated,” she says. “I’d roll up on the line and meet Natalia Tsylinskaya [from Belarus] who must be 10kg more than me and think: ‘Holy cow, what am I doing here? I’m in danger for my life, never mind my pride.’ ”

In her early days, Pendleton would race in mascara and make-up just to reinforce her femininity. “I’d think: ‘You’re beating me, but I take care of myself.’ It was like psychological armour,” she says. Now she has the best of both worlds, winning gold medals while appearing on the covers of magazines.

Her size could have been a substantial weakness in the days of old, when, she says, sharp elbows were as important as big thighs. Cameras have greatly reduced the amount of pushing and shoving, which, flying around a track at 60km/h, is a relief. “Last year in the worlds, a German girl just came up and barged me on to the flat at the bottom,” Pendleton says. “But they sounded the gun and she got disqualified. I don’t get involved in that, I’m a stickler for rules. And these days they don’t tolerate it.”

Another bonus of being slimline is, she says, the evidence it provides that she is clean. That is not something, she thinks, that can be said of every one of her rivals, even if track cycling has not been blighted like road racing. She believes in life bans for drugs cheats.

“I have my suspicions of women I race against on the track, a feeling that it isn’t naturally what God gave them. Sometimes you see them improve from nowhere and then you hear who they’ve been training with. They put on five kilos, their voices drop and they get acne. That is a lot of coincidences.

“Sometimes I feel that unfairness, but as long as I win, I have proved you can do it without clean. At least you know I’m not on steroids. Just look at me.”

It has not just been a battle against bigger women and potential cheats, but also a test of will to reach the top. Introduced to cycling by her father, a keen amateur in Bedfordshire, Pendleton was beset by insecurities until she was sent to see a psychologist. Between them, they realised that she had been trying to please other people.

At a training school in Switzerland she would despair if her coach did not shower her with praise. “It wore me down to the point where I felt low and pathetic,” she says. “It was ridiculous. You have to realise you are not a child any more. Now I don’t care what anybody else thinks.”

For the next five months she will be obsessing about Beijing, where she can compete in only one event because, outrageously, there are fewer races for women than men. Despite being world champion in the sprint for the past two years, nothing can be taken for granted. “I only have to look over the wrong shoulder for a split second and it could all be over,” Pendleton says.

Before then, there is also the danger from White Van Man. “Everyone says the track is so dangerous, but my biggest risk is being knocked off my road bike because someone is too impatient to wait 20 seconds and overtakes me on a bend. I want to go out with a big neon sign saying, ‘Do you know how important my legs are!’ There are a lot of people out there who hate cyclists.”

If it is true, you sense that Pendleton may be about to change things.