Today, Switzerland; tomorrow, Wales; next month, China. Shanaze Reade is running through the dizzying schedule that maps out her path to Olympic glory, a programme so busy that she is sometimes not sure where she is supposed to be.

Great Britain's team of Olympic cyclists will be presented to the nation tomorrow, but no one is quite sure whether Reade will be in Newport to appear with them. But the 19-year-old with attitude and a gleaming stud in her upper lip says that the jet-setting lifestyle is merely a means of fulfilling her ultimate ambition.

That could sound like the hollow pronouncement of a Miss World contestant, but there is nothing hollow about Reade. Even at her young age, she is one of the most feared female cyclists in the world. Ask other members of the Team GB squad about Reade and they answer with a look of awe and wonder. Victoria Pendleton, who will partner Reade in the punishing team sprint at the Beijing Olympics, says simply: “She is blessed.”

Because Reade, it seems, has no fear. Forget the collywobbles that so often afflict our best athletes, despite their army of psychologists and advisers. Reade just gets on with it. “I visualise putting my brain into a box and closing it,” she says. “I become like a robot. I have always done it. When you get to a final and you are favourite, why let it worry you? If it's going to happen, it will happen, so why let it get to you? I won't let negative thoughts stand in my way.”

Four gold medals on the track, and on a BMX bike, in only two years - not to mention a bevy of medals at junior level - are ample proof of Reade's singular determination. Experts speak of her as Britain's only cast-iron certainty for gold in Beijing and say that, at 19, she is a rare natural, able to switch disciplines from the topsy-turvy racing of BMX to the track, where she has twice won World Championship gold with Pendleton.

The BMX event, new to the Olympics, separates Reade from her team-mates. While Team GB have been in Newport, South Wales, for their final training camp before Beijing, Reade has been in Manchester and Switzerland, working on the peculiarly different discipline that is BMX, powering a small bike on a fiercely undulating circuit, requiring strength and flexibility rather than the sheer power of the track cyclists. Uniquely, Reade has the gifts to perform in both styles. In the end, though, as she says, it is just about pedalling.

That ability to tackle challenges enabled her to escape a tough upbringing on a working-class estate in Crewe, Cheshire. Her father, Lincoln, left the family when she was a baby and Reade was brought up by her grandparents. She has watched close friends from school wander into early parenthood and unemployment and is driven by a need to elude their failure. If ever Gordon Brown wants to find the face to promote British sport at its best then Reade - intelligent, articulate and determined - should be his first choice.

“Too many girls get blinded by the easy life,” she says. “They have kids at 16 and you think, 'Phew, where have their lives gone?' I think it's getting worse among young people, I really do. Look at obesity levels.

“You only get one shot at being the Olympic champion and I am just grabbing it with both hands. I don't ever want to look back and wonder, 'Why didn't I do that?' It's a negative that comes from my family. I don't ever want to be a failure. I never want to think I lost the Olympics because I didn't work hard enough or did something stupid.”

If that makes Reade sound scathing about her background, it goes against the grain of a grounded and kind nature. She just cannot abide laziness and lack of drive and, at the end of her career, wants to give something back by going into schools to help to transform the way that sport is taught, hoping to change the lives of children who do not have her drive to succeed.

“These days, there are a lot more things kids like to do, like hanging out with friends and drinking out on the streets,” Reade said. “They are blind to the fact that living as a sportsperson is an absolutely amazing job. No other job could give you the satisfaction that being a sportsperson does for me. Taking part in massive competitions, going all over the world, it's fantastic.”

It's even more fantastic when you win, and Reade is a serial winner. She may not know where she is going to be from one week to the next, but she does know where she will be next month - in Beijing for the Olympic Games. And she knows what she will be doing: putting her brain in a box and concentrating on winning yet another gold medalÍ.

New kid opn the blocks

BMX racing started in California in the 1960s as a pedal-powered version of off-road motorbike racing. The first World Championships were held in 1982.

Riders start from a high ramp and then race round a course featuring turns, bumps, hollows and other obstacles.

In 1993, BMX was sanctioned by the International Cycling Union and it was agreed in 2003 that the sport should make its debut at the 2008 Olympics.

The Laoshan course in Beijing is 350 metres long for women, 370 metres for men. Races will be held on August 20 and 21.

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